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Featured Application: Traffic light scheduling optimisation using a task allocation model based on division-of-labour behaviour as observed in insect colonies. Traffic light scheduling is a critical aspect of traffic management with many recently developed solutions that incorporate computational intelligence approaches. This paper presents a traffic light scheduling algorithm based on a task allocation model that simulates the division of labour among insects in a colony, specifically ant colonies. The developed algorithm switches the green light based on a probability calculated every second from the traffic volume around the traffic light. The application of this algorithm to several benchmark simulated traffic scenarios shows optimal performance compared to five other traffic scheduling algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The division of labour hypothesis suggests that plants exhibiting heteranthery utilise different stamen types for distinct purposes; feeding stamens provide pollen as a reward for pollinators, whereas pollinating stamens ensure successful reproduction. However, the biomechanical factors that influence pollinator behaviour in relation to different stamen types remain underexplored. In this study, we investigated Melastoma candidum, a species characterised by dimorphic stamens and poricidal anthers, to elucidate how flower morphology, pollen fertility, and biomechanics of pollinator interactions affect pollination efficiency. We observed the behaviour and stamen preference of multiple bee species visiting the flowers, with a particular focus on the frequency of flower visitation and stigma contact. Among the pollinators studied, Xylocopa flavifrons emerged as the primary pollinator on Okinawajima Island, Japan. Our analysis revealed that while both stamen types exhibit comparable pollen fertility, X. flavifrons preferentially buzzed feeding stamens with the mechanical advantage of pollen collection due to their structural integrity. This preference was further corroborated by biomechanical interactions, wherein the weaker pollinating stamens could not bear the weight of the bee, thereby relegating their function in pollen release. These findings elucidate the significant influence of biomechanical factors on pollinator behaviour and stamen function, providing novel insights into the mechanisms underlying division of labour in plant-pollinator interactions.

Collective behaviours, such as flocking in birds or decision making by bee colonies, are some of the most intriguing behavioural phenomena in the animal kingdom. The study of collective behaviour focuses on the interactions between individuals within groups, which typically occur over close ranges and short timescales, and how these interactions drive larger scale properties such as group size, information transfer within groups and group-level decision making. To date, however, most studies have focused on snapshots, typically studying collective behaviour over short timescales up to minutes or hours. However, being a biological trait, much longer timescales are important in animal collective behaviour, particularly how individuals change over their lifetime (the domain of developmental biology) and how individuals change from one generation to the next (the domain of evolutionary biology). Here, we give an overview of collective behaviour across timescales from the short to the long, illustrating how a full understanding of this behaviour in animals requires much more research attention on its developmental and evolutionary biology. Our review forms the prologue of this special issue, which addresses and pushes forward understanding the development and evolution of collective behaviour, encouraging a new direction for collective behaviour research. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Collective behaviour through time'.

The functioning of biological systems relies on the cooperation of specialized components and understanding the processes that produce such specialization is a major challenge in biology. Here, we study the ontogeny of biological systems at a new phenotypic level: the superorganisms (i.e. insect societies with specialized individuals).We investigate how founding queens, the earliest developmental stage of ant colonies, transition from expressing behavioural pluripotency to becoming strictly specialized in egg production.We demonstrate that the presence of workers both initiates and maintains this queen specialization, and propose that such a social control of queen behaviour is common in ants and regulated by ancestral mechanisms.These findings contradict the traditional view of social insect queens as being intrinsically specialized in egg production and may reshape our understanding of the division of labour in insect societies. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamics of basic and applied research at university and industry have steadily changed since the Eighties, with the private sector reducing its investments in science and universities experiencing significant remodelling in the governance of their funding. While studies have focussed on documenting these changes in industry, less attention has been paid to observe the trajectories of basic and applied research in universities. This work contributes to fill this gap by looking at the evolution of publicly funded research that has been patented by universities between 1978 and 2015. First, we adopt a critical perspective of the basic versus applied dichotomy and identify patents according to three typologies of research: basic, mission-oriented, and applied research. Second, we describe the evolution of these three typologies in universities compared to industry. Our results show that over the years, patents from academic research that was publicly funded have become more oriented towards pure basic research, with mission-oriented basic research and pure applied research decreasing from the late 1990s. These results complement and extend the literature on basic and applied research dynamics in the private sector. By introducing mission-oriented research as a type of basic research with consideration of use, the work problematises the basic and applied research dichotomy and provides insights into the evolution of academic research focus, offering a more complex picture of how university research contributes to industry and broader social value creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As gender equality is the basis for realizing social–environmental–economic sustainability, inequality in gender can significantly hamper economic productivity and negatively affect individuals’ lives. This study examines the desired attitudes towards gender norms that can be used to improve gender inequality in a developing country for sustainable development. A survey was conducted with 230 adults from middle-income households in Lahore, Pakistan. A paired sample t-test was used to determine the difference between the desired role allocation for men and women and gender stereotypes. The results revealed that participants believed in the traditional private/public division of gender roles. However, the inclination towards gender equality in daily activities in the public domain, such as shopping and meeting friends and certain professions (e.g., white-collar jobs), encourages empowerment-based intervention. To enhance gender equality in Pakistan and similar societies, people must know they are not alone in thinking and prioritizing gender equality in everyday roles and professions. Acknowledging that ‘others’ in society are also willing to forego traditional patriarchal trends may promote action toward the desired perception.

This study explores a new governance mechanism aimed at regional integration and explains how this mechanism can achieve optimal governance of water resources through the division of labour in politics and the economy. This study adopts political economic geography as the research approach. The data used in the analysis were obtained from official documents, interviews and field investigations, and its authenticity was interactively checked via triangulation. The results show that ‘spatial shifts’ were the driving force behind water redistribution. The division of labour between politics and the economy eliminates obstacles to water distribution through the mutual adjustment and division of underground rhizomes; ‘creative destruction’ and ‘destructive creation’ are alternately used to achieve dialectical progress. This study concludes that in this case, the process of regional integration simultaneously generates circular mechanisms in which political power and economic productivity are consolidated.

Traffic light scheduling is a critical aspect of traffic management with many recently developed solutions that incorporate computational intelligence approaches. This paper presents a traffic light scheduling algorithm based on a task allocation model that simulates the division of labour among insects in a colony, specifically ant colonies. The developed algorithm switches the green light based on a probability calculated every second from the traffic volume around the traffic light. The application of this algorithm to several benchmark simulated traffic scenarios shows optimal performance compared to five other traffic scheduling algorithms.

The size–complexity rule posits that the evolution of larger cooperative groups should favour more division of labour. Examples include more cell types in larger multicellular organisms, and more polymorphic castes in larger eusocial colonies. However, a correlation between division of labour and group size may reflect a shared response of both traits to resource availability and/or profitability. Here, this possibility was addressed by investigating the evolution of sterile caste number (worker and soldier morphotypes) in termites, a major clade of eusocial insects in which the drivers of caste polymorphism are poorly understood. A novel dataset on 90 termite species was compiled from the published literature. The analysis showed that sterile caste number did increase markedly with colony size. However, after controlling for resource adaptations and phylogeny, there was no evidence for this relationship. Rather, sterile caste number increased with increasing nest–food separation and decreased with soil-feeding, through changes in worker (but not soldier) morphotype number. Further, colony size increased with nest–food separation, thus driving the false correlation between sterile caste number and colony size. These findings support adaptation to higher energy acquisition as key to the rise of complex insect societies, with larger size being a by-product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human ecological success relies on our characteristic ability to flexibly self-organize into cooperative social groups, the most successful of which employ substantial specialization and division of labour. Unlike most other animals, humans learn by trial and error during their lives what role to take on. However, when some critical roles are more attractive than others, and individuals are self-interested, then there is a social dilemma: each individual would prefer others take on the critical but unremunerative roles so they may remain free to take one that pays better. But disaster occurs if all act thus and a critical role goes unfilled. In such situations learning an optimum role distribution may not be possible. Consequently, a fundamental question is: how can division of labour emerge in groups of self-interested lifetime-learning individuals? Here, we show that by introducing a model of social norms, which we regard as emergent patterns of decentralized social sanctioning, it becomes possible for groups of self-interested individuals to learn a productive division of labour involving all critical roles. Such social norms work by redistributing rewards within the population to disincentivize antisocial roles while incentivizing prosocial roles that do not intrinsically pay as well as others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adam Smith saw the division of labour and specialisation as the driver of 'universal opulence', a process limited by the scope of the market. He also believed that competition was essential to ensure growth benefited the public. Yet eventually there could be a trade-off between these two mechanisms. In today's era of global production networks, the markets at certain links in supply chains may support just one specialised supplier; and in winner-take-all digital markets there is a single supplier even at global scale. When the scope of the market is global, there may be a trade-off between specialisation and competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Pseudanthia or 'false flowers' are multiflowered units that resemble solitary flowers in form and function. Over the last century the term 'pseudanthium' has been applied to a wide array of morphologically divergent blossoms, ranging from those with easily noticeable florets to derived, reduced units in which individual flowers become almost indistinguishable. Although initially admired mostly by botanists, the diversity and widespread distribution of pseudanthia across angiosperms has already made them a fascinating topic for evolutionary and developmental comparative studies. Scope This review synthesizes historical and current concepts on the biology of pseudanthia. Our first aim is to establish a clear, operational definition of pseudanthium and disentangle common terminological misconceptions surrounding that term. Our second aim is to summarize knowledge of the morphological and developmental diversity of pseudanthia and embed it within a modern phylogenetic framework. Lastly, we want to provide a comprehensive overview on the evolution and ecological importance of pseudanthia and outline perspectives for future studies. Conclusions The understanding of pseudanthia has changed multiple times and reflects three different interpretations of their 'flower-like' qualities: developmental (similarity in structure), figural (similarity in form and function) and phylogenetic (homology between angiosperm flowers and monoecious reproductive shoots in gymnosperms). Here, we propose to narrow the term pseudanthium to multiflowered blossoms resembling zoophilous flowers in form, i.e. in being structurally subdivided in a showy periphery and a reproductive centre. According to this definition, pseudanthia sensu stricto evolved independently in at least 41 angiosperm families. The recurrent acquisition of pseudanthia sensu stricto in all major lineages of flowering plants indicates repeated interactions between developmental constraints (smallness of flowers, meristematic conditions) and selective pressures, such as demands of pollinators and/or environmental conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many social insects display age polyethism: young workers stay inside the nest, and only older workers forage. This behavioural transition is accompanied by genetic and physiological changes, but the mechanistic origin of it remains unclear. To investigate if the mechanical demands on the musculoskeletal system effectively prevent young workers from foraging, we studied the biomechanical development of the bite apparatus in Atta vollenweideri leaf-cutter ants. Fully matured foragers generated peak in vivo bite forces of around 100 mN, more than one order of magnitude in excess of those measured for freshly eclosed callows of the same size. This change in bite force was accompanied by a sixfold increase in the volume of the mandible closer muscle, and by a substantial increase of the flexural rigidity of the head capsule, driven by a significant increase in both average thickness and indentation modulus of the head capsule cuticle. Consequently, callows lack the muscle force capacity required for leaf-cutting, and their head capsule is so compliant that large muscle forces would be likely to cause damaging deformations. On the basis of these results, we speculate that continued biomechanical development post eclosion may be a key factor underlying age polyethism, wherever foraging is associated with substantial mechanical demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Division of labour is a crucial characteristic of social organisations such as insect colonies and is a key feature in their well-known survival and efficacy. The presence of "laziness", or inactivity is a widely debated phenomenon that has been observed in some colonies and is puzzling because it goes against the idea that a division of labour would lead to greater efficiency and effectiveness. Inactivity has been previously explained as a by-product of social learning, which is a fundamental type of behavioural adaptation in these colonies. However, this explanation is limited because it is still unclear if social learning governs aspects of colony life. This study explores how inactivity can also emerge similarly from an individual learning paradigm, which is a firmly established paradigm of behaviour learning in insect colonies. Using individual-based simulations backed up by mathematical analysis, the study finds that individual learning can induce the same behavioural patterns as social learning. This is important for understanding the collective behaviour of social insects. The insight that both modes of learning can lead to the same patterns of behaviour opens up new ways of approaching the study of emergent patterns of collective behaviour in a more generalised manner. Division of labour, or the differentiation of the individuals in a collective across tasks, is a fundamental aspect of social organisations, such as social insect colonies. It allows for efficient resource use and improves the chances of survival for the entire collective. The emergence of large inactive groups of individuals in insect colonies sometimes referred to as laziness, has been a puzzling and hotly debated division-of-labour phenomenon in recent years that is counter to the intuitive notion of effectiveness. It has previously been shown that inactivity can be explained as a by-product of social learning without the need to invoke an adaptive function. While highlighting an interesting and important possibility, this explanation is limited because it is not yet clear whether the relevant aspects of colony life are governed by social learning. In this paper, we explore the two fundamental types of behavioural adaptation that can lead to a division of labour, individual learning and social learning. We find that inactivity can just as well emerge from individual learning alone. We compare the behavioural dynamics in various environmental settings under the social and individual learning assumptions, respectively. We present individual-based simulations backed up by analytic theory, focusing on adaptive dynamics for the social paradigm and cross-learning for the individual paradigm. We find that individual learning can induce the same behavioural patterns previously observed for social learning. This is important for the study of the collective behaviour of social insects because individual learning is a firmly established paradigm of behaviour learning in their colonies. Beyond the study of inactivity, in particular, the insight that both modes of learning can lead to the same patterns of behaviour opens new pathways to approach the study of emergent patterns of collective behaviour from a more generalised perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Low-cost sustainable feedstocks are essential for commercially viable biotechnologies. These feedstocks, often derived from plant or food waste, contain a multitude of different complex biomolecules which require multiple enzymes to hydrolyse and metabolise. Current standard biotechnology uses monocultures in which a single host expresses all the proteins required for the consolidated bioprocess. However, these hosts have limited capacity for expressing proteins before growth is impacted. This limitation may be overcome by utilising division of labour (DOL) in a consortium, where each member expresses a single protein of a longer degradation pathway. Results Here, we model a two-strain consortium, with one strain expressing an endohydrolase and a second strain expressing an exohydrolase, for cooperative degradation of a complex substrate. Our results suggest that there is a balance between increasing expression to enhance degradation versus the burden that higher expression causes. Once a threshold of burden is reached, the consortium will consistently perform better than an equivalent single-cell monoculture. Conclusions We demonstrate that resource-aware whole-cell models can be used to predict the benefits and limitations of using consortia systems to overcome burden. Our model predicts the region of expression where DOL would be beneficial for growth on starch, which will assist in making informed design choices for this, and other, complex-substrate degradation pathways.

Debates around the future of work have (re-)emerged strongly as concerns about a new era of workplace automation grow from a plethora of narratives estimating the potential of machine substitution. This research aims to analyse how these perspectives dictate current discussions based on taken-for-granted assumptions about work. The analysis takes the lens of work psychology and delves into the case of automated vehicles (AVs), an oft-debated form of automation by its implications for the transport workforce. We explore how the debate is subdued to a deterministic "metrological universe", overloading the present epoch with certainty about imaginaries of "driverless futures". However, when we move our attention beyond the quantitative speculation of future employment and connect automation with the concrete socio-professional realities of transport workers, such imaginaries are deconstructed while key issues regarding the quality of work with AVs emerge. By arguing that such issues remain "forgotten" in dominant technological discussions, bipartite and tripartite actions towards decent work are gathered, considering the institutional constellation in road transport. As future research, we propose to challenge those governance models predicated on the language of AV acceptance, which ultimately places the responsibility of managing the uncertainties that AVs hold on the shoulders of transport workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The division of labour hypothesis between stamens has explained the evolution of divergent functions between dimorphic stamens in the same flower. However, little is known about whether the distinct type of stamens differs in attractiveness to pollinators. Therefore, we investigate whether the two types of stamens commonly found in Swartzia have different visual and olfactory attractants. We performed observations of anthesis dynamics, registration and collection of floral visitors, measurements of reflectance of floral parts and chemical analysis of the volatile organic compounds of the floral parts of two species, S. flaemingii and S. simplex. Both species have two distinct sets of stamens: one with smaller and abundant stamens in the centre of the flower and the other with fewer but larger abaxial stamens. The sets differ in UV reflectance (only S. simplex) and exhibit a distinct chromatic contrast. Concerning olfactory attractiveness, aliphatic compounds make up most of the odour of the two species, both whole flowers and most of their floral organs. On the other hand, only S. simplex presented apocarotenoids (as ionones) and benzenoids. Furthermore, there are differences in the proportion of volatiles emitted by the stamen in both cases, as the high proportion of sesquiterpenes among the smaller stamens compared to the larger ones. In conclusion, the two types of stamens found in S. flaemingii and S. simplex show a distinct attractiveness. In addition, our data have demonstrated diverse ways of differential attractiveness both between distinct stamens set per flower and between the two species from the same pollen flowers genus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Family Research (JFR) is the property of University of Bamberg Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article ties in with the scholarship on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on gender equality. Based on a qualitative analysis of interviews with parents of children under 12, we examine the processes that led to the increase or dismantling of the gender division of labour in families during the first nationwide lockdown. Using the concepts of path dependency and 'doing' and 'undoing' gender, we explain the strategies couples with children used to adapt to the enormous increase in reproductive work in the family during lockdown. 'Doing gender' practices witnessed during lockdown included an acceptance of the increased care work as the responsibility of women, ensuring 'a room of one's own' only for men, and separating the public and private sphere only for men. Practices that led to 'undoing gender' involved mainly the explicit negotiation between partners of the division of labour during the lockdown and the organisation of reproductive work in 'shifts'. The division of labour within a couple before the pandemic proved to be crucial for what strategy they chose to adapt to the lockdown. According to our findings, extending the egalitarian division of labour has led to greater satisfaction among partners and indicates greater societal resilience to crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Low-cost sustainable feedstocks are essential for commercially viable biotechnologies. These feedstocks, often derived from plant or food waste, contain a multitude of different complex biomolecules which require multiple enzymes to hydrolyse and metabolise. Current standard biotechnology uses monocultures in which a single host expresses all the proteins required for the consolidated bioprocess. However, these hosts have limited capacity for expressing proteins before growth is impacted. This limitation may be overcome by utilising division of labour (DOL) in a consortium, where each member expresses a single protein of a longer degradation pathway. Results: Here, we model a two-strain consortium, with one strain expressing an endohydrolase and a second strain expressing an exohydrolase, for cooperative degradation of a complex substrate. Our results suggest that there is a balance between increasing expression to enhance degradation versus the burden that higher expression causes. Once a threshold of burden is reached, the consortium will consistently perform better than an equivalent single-cell monoculture. Conclusions: We demonstrate that resource-aware whole-cell models can be used to predict the benefits and limitations of using consortia systems to overcome burden. Our model predicts the region of expression where DOL would be beneficial for growth on starch, which will assist in making informed design choices for this, and other, complex-substrate degradation pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selection may favour traits throughout an individual's lifetime or at a particular life stage. In many species of social insects, established colonies that are more genetically diverse outperform less diverse colonies with respect to a variety of traits that contribute to fitness, but whether selection favours high diversity in small colonies is unknown. We tested the hypothesis that selection favours genetically diverse colonies during the juvenile period using a multi-year field experiment with the harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex occidentalis. We used controlled matings to generate colonies that varied in genetic diversity and transplanted them into the field. We monitored their survival for seven (the 2015 cohort, n = 149) and six (the 2016 cohort, n = 157) years. Genetically more diverse colonies had greater survival, resulting in significant viability selection. However, in both cohorts survival was not influenced by genetic diversity until colonies were three years old. We suggest that changes in their internal organization enabled colonies to use the benefits of multiple genotypes, and discuss possible mechanisms that can generate this pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociología del Trabajo is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research has demonstrated how ignorance is made, manipulated and called upon; how it is the result of strategies, activities and structures. This article extends the literature on ignorance by exploring actors' own explanations of their self-inflicted ignorance following acts of ignoring. By means of a case analysis, we explore how actors explain and justify ignoring data they themselves produced. We provide a multifaceted model of how ignoring actors' own rationales, facilitated by contextual conditions, enables persistent acts of ignoring the content and dysfunction of collectively upheld systems. We contribute to the understanding of ignorance by demonstrating how self-inflicted ignorance is made possible by the combination of ignoring rationales and their facilitators, which configures buffers against knowledge-seeking efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to review Durkheim's concepts of division of labour and social solidarity, especially how social solidarity developed through the division of labour and how the interplay between the two gives rise to the functionality of the social system. This study, too, explains the relevance of such concepts to studying contemporary society. This study concludes that some underlying shortcomings need addressing without denying Durkheim's attempt to provide a sound methodological and theoretical foundation for sociology as a discipline. Durkheim's contention that the Division of labour forms social solidarity is deterministic and subscribes to the law of rigidity. Individuals' occupational function is seen as a determinant and therefore has nothing to do with human free will and individuals' subjectivity to meaning. It is a sort of reductionism because it eliminates the entire propensity of human nature. It reduces the conditions of society to that of the organism of a living being. As a result, it is tough to replicate Durkheim's solidarity model to explain the complex nature of current urban societies.

The social mole-rats of the family Bathyergidae show elaborate social organisation that may include division of labour between breeders and non-breeders as well as across non-breeders within their groups. However, comparative behavioural data across the taxa are rare and contrasts and similarities between species are poorly understood. Field studies of social bathyergids usually involve capturing all group members until the entire group is captured. Because each animal is only captured once and traps are typically placed in close proximity to active foraging areas, the order in which animals are captured provides an indication of the foraging activity of different individuals and of the spatial organisation of the group within the burrow system. Here, we compare the association of capture order with breeding status, sex, and body mass in four species and subspecies of social bathyergids, which vary in group size and represent all three social genera within the family Bathyergidae. We show that in naked and Damaraland mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber and Fukomys damarensis), male and female breeders are captured later than non-breeders, whereas in two different subspecies of the genus Cryptomys only female breeders are captured later than non-breeders. The effect sizes vary largely and are 10 times larger in naked mole-rats as compared to Fukomys and 3–4 times larger than in Cryptomys. Among non-breeders, sex effects are notably absent in all species and body mass predicted capture order in both naked and Damaraland mole-rats. In naked mole-rats, larger non-breeders were captured earlier than smaller ones, whereas in Damaraland mole-rats intermediate-sized non-breeders were captured first. Our data suggest that there are similarities in behavioural structure and spatial organisation across all social bathyergid species, though the most pronounced differences within groups are found in naked mole-rats.

Task allocation among social insect workers is an ideal framework for studying the molecular mechanisms underlying behavioural plasticity because workers of similar genotype adopt different behavioural phenotypes. Elegant laboratory studies have pioneered this effort, but field studies involving the genetic regulation of task allocation are rare. Here, we investigate the expression of the foraging gene in harvester ant workers from five age- and task-related groups in a natural population, and we experimentally test how exposure to light affects foraging expression in brood workers and foragers. Results from our field study show that the regulation of the foraging gene in harvester ants occurs at two time scales: levels of foraging mRNA are associated with ontogenetic changes over weeks in worker age, location and task, and there are significant daily oscillations in foraging expression in foragers. The temporal dissection of foraging expression reveals that gene expression changes in foragers occur across a scale of hours and the level of expression is predicted by activity rhythms: foragers have high levels of foraging mRNA during daylight hours when they are most active outside the nests. In the experimental study, we find complex interactions in foraging expression between task behaviour and light exposure. Oscillations occur in foragers following experimental exposure to 13 L : 11 D (LD) conditions, but not in brood workers under similar conditions. No significant differences were seen in foraging expression over time in either task in 24 h dark (DD) conditions. Interestingly, the expression of foraging in both undisturbed field and experimentally treated foragers is also significantly correlated with the expression of the circadian clock gene, cycle Our results provide evidence that the regulation of this gene is context-dependent and associated with both ontogenetic and daily behavioural plasticity in field colonies of harvester ants. Our results underscore the importance of assaying temporal patterns in behavioural gene expression and suggest that gene regulation is an integral mechanism associated with behavioural plasticity in harvester ants.

This study examines the challenges faced by working women in Pakistan, particularly those employed in tobacco kilns. The research focuses on the impact of labour division and social disparities on female subjugation and economic independence. The objective of the study is to evaluate the financial dependence or independence of working women in tobacco kilns. Convenience sampling is used to gather information through interviews with women currently employed in tobacco-drying facilities. The collected data is analyzed using qualitative analysis, with a focus on identifying codes and themes. The findings reveal that women in these workplaces endure terrible working conditions and receive inadequate compensation for their labour. They are subjected to emotional and physical violence by male members both at home and in the workplace. Moreover, they are forced to borrow money and work against their will, resulting in their children sacrificing formal education. Additionally, they face significant barriers to healthcare and are unable to obtain social security cards due to their background. The study concludes that educating working women about the challenges they face can empower them to overcome these obstacles and improve their socioeconomic status, ultimately leading to more dignified lives. The study recommends implementing measures to address gender inequalities, improve working conditions, and provide support systems for working women in Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Challenges of the Future / Izzivi Prihodnosti is the property of Fakulteta za Organizacijske Studije v Novem mestu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This thematic issue aims to shed light on different facets of the relationship between division of labour within families and couples, work–life conflict and family policy. In this afterword, we provide a summary of the contributions by emphasizing three main aspects in need of further scrutiny: the conceptualisation of labour division within families and couples, the multilevel structure of relationships and the interactions of gender(ed) values at different levels of exploration.

This thematic issue aims to shed light on the various ways of linking division of labour within families, work–life conflict and family policy in Europe. This editorial briefly introduces key concepts and provides a general overview of the published articles.

The current article aims to explain the interrelationships between the educational attainment of individuals living in households with heterosexual partners, their work–life balance (WLB) and the macro-economic climate of the country they live in, using data from the European Social Survey. WLB is a complex concept, as it is not only determined by factors related to someone’s employment or domestic work and childcare responsibilities, but also by decisions informed by personal experiences and circumstances, subjective perceptions and preferences. Moreover, in households with cohabiting partners, this decision-making process involves certain compromises where financial incentives, interests, gender and power dynamics play an important role. Since educational attainment is positively related to labour market outcomes, such as employment and wages, while at the same time more women are participating in education and the labour market, the gender conflict on the division of work and time within households intensifies and traditional gender roles are challenged. WLB is at the heart of this conflict operating as a mechanism through which division of work and time is reconciled on the individual and household level. Results from the current article reveal great heterogeneity between the 17 European countries examined. Perhaps surprisingly, educational attainment can have a detrimental effect on the WLB of spouses and cohabiting partners, especially for women whose level of WLB seems also more sensitive to fluctuations of the macro-economic climate of the country they live in. However, there is an indication that when an economy goes into recession, higher education has a cushioning effect on female’s WLB compared to relatively better economic times.

A model of co-evolution between individual strategy and gaming environment is proposed here. Different from the general evolutionary game dynamics, the gaming system developed here is deeply coupled with the strategy choices and the environment state. The game state, payoff matrices and gaming environment of the system will influence each other dynamically. We firstly analyse the co-evolution between two populations with two strategies and derive the sufficient condition under which the state of strategy and environment will evolve periodically. Then we extend the model to multiple populations and strategies to study a more complicated and realistic system. In this framework, we verify whether and how the convergence will take place among groups in the multi-strategy case. Our results provide some inspirations to tackle with the cooperation dilemma and research on the self-organized evolution in multi-behaviour populations in the real-world situations.

Purpose – Bureaucracy to a large extent entrenches orderliness and productive means of achieving goals in both public and private organisations across the world. However, bureaucracy is not suitable in the management of hospitals due to its peculiar nature of operations. This study investigates the conundrum of bureaucratic processes and health-care service delivery in government hospitals in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach – The study surveyed 600 outpatients and attendees visiting tertiary and government hospitals in Nigeria using descriptive design to obtained data from the respondents. A research instrument, questionnaire, was used to gather data. Out of the 600 outpatients visiting the 20 hospitals in government and tertiary hospitals, 494 responses were returned from the attendees. The study employed random sampling strategy to collect the information. Findings – The findings of this study were that service delivery in government hospitals were in adverse position on all the four constructs of bureaucratic dimensions as against quality of service delivery in hospitals in Nigeria. It discovered that bureaucratic impersonality cannot impact on the quality of service delivery in government hospitals in Nigeria. Separation and division of labour among health workers have no significant effect on quality service delivery in government hospitals. Formal rules and regulations (administrative procedure, rules, and policies) prevent quality service delivery in government hospitals in Nigeria. Also, patient’s waiting time was not significant to the quality of service delivery in government hospitals. Research limitations/implications – The results are constrained with dimensions of bureaucratic processes. Thus, the implication of this study is that bureaucracy in the Nigerian public hospitals is an unnecessary marriage which should be carefully separated and de-emphasised for quality service delivery in the hospitals to thrive. Practical implications – Largely, this study is practical essential as it unearths the irrelevant operations procedure that hinder progress in Nigerian hospitals. Originality/value – The study accomplishes recognised importance to survey how bureaucracy impedes quality service delivery in government hospitals. This study has provided a vital clue to elements that will bring rapid attention to patients’outcome in Nigerian hospitals and health-care facilities which hitherto has not been emphasised. The study has contributed to the existing body of knowledge associated to healthcare service quality in developing country.

Municipal activity leaders are, after teachers, the second largest category of supervisors in French primary schemes, both in terms of their population size and also with respect to the amount of time they spend with children. The article, based on an ethnographically-oriented sociological study conducted in seven Parisian schools, sheds light on activity leaders’ role in division of labour by analysing their contribution to children's education. It draws a picture of activity leaders’ practices, one centring on “playfulness”, the group, negotiations, commitment and a disdain for academic competition. It then reveals how said practices translate into specific forms of activity for children, generating new possibilities for some but disarming others in the face of certain very specific situations.

The article highlights the dominated position that French secondary school supervisors assume in the division of educational work. It does this by analysing the content of their tasks as well as the different ways in which they appropriate it, subsequently revealing that their dominated position is determined by two categories of tasks (administrative and disciplinary) that account for the vast majority of their daily education work. The demonstration is also made that supervisors’ position will also be shaped by the various ways that they juggle said tasks, which they may choose to accept and/or redefine – or, instead, to distance themselves from by developing margins of autonomy, notwithstanding the continuation in this latter case of their dominated status.

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Multicellularity is characterized by cooperation among cells for the development, maintenance and reproduction of the multicellular organism. Cancer can be viewed as cheating within this cooperative multicellular system. Complex multicellularity, and the cooperation underlying it, has evolved independently multiple times. We review the existing literature on cancer and cancer-like phenomena across life, not only focusing on complex multicellularity but also reviewing cancer-like phenomena across the tree of life more broadly. We find that cancer is characterized by a breakdown of the central features of cooperation that characterize multicellularity, including cheating in proliferation inhibition, cell death, division of labour, resource allocation and extracellular environment maintenance (which we term the five foundations of multicellularity). Cheating on division of labour, exhibited by a lack of differentiation and disorganized cell masses, has been observed in all forms of multicellularity. This suggests that deregulation of differentiation is a fundamental and universal aspect of carcinogenesis that may be underappreciated in cancer biology. Understanding cancer as a breakdown of multicellular cooperation provides novel insights into cancer hallmarks and suggests a set of assays and biomarkers that can be applied across species and characterize the fundamental requirements for generating a cancer.

Recent theory has overturned the assumption that accelerating returns from individual specialisation are required to favour the evolution of division of labour. Yanni et al., 2020, showed that topologically constrained groups, where cells cooperate with only direct neighbours such as for filaments or branching growths, can evolve a reproductive division of labour even with diminishing returns from individual specialisation. We develop a conceptual framework and specific models to investigate the factors that can favour the initial evolution of reproductive division of labour. We find that selection for division of labour in topologically constrained groups: (1) is not a single mechanism to favour division of labour—depending upon details of the group structure, division of labour can be favoured for different reasons; (2) always involves an efficiency benefit at the level of group fitness; and (3) requires a mechanism of coordination to determine which individuals perform which tasks. Given that such coordination must evolve prior to or concurrently with division of labour, this could limit the extent to which topological constraints favoured the initial evolution of division of labour. We conclude by suggesting experimental designs that could determine why division of labour is favoured in the natural world.

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In sociological research on relationships between professionals and volunteers, professionals are often contrasted with volunteers as abstracted, distinct and homogeneous groups. Focusing on healthcare in selected modern societies, and adopting a neo-Weberian and complementary boundary work perspective, this essay argues the landscape is more complex than between paid groups with exclusionary social closure and the unwaged in the market. First, diversification exists within health professions themselves based on social closure, with hierarchies and differential scopes of practice. Second, unpaid volunteers vary in responsibility depending on factors like employment sector and social background, including qualifications and experience. Third, in the paid workforce, there are interstitial non-professionalised health occupations, such as the neglected, lower educated health support workers, forming the largest, most heterogeneous healthcare labour force. Drawing on studies of healthcare, it is argued that recognising the diversification and interplay between professionals, volunteers and support workers is vital for enhancing health policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background The morphological structures of organisms form tightly integrated but mutually independent character complexes (modules) linked through common development and function. Even though their abundance, diversity, and complex caste systems make camponotine ants ideal subjects to research developmental modularity and phenotypic integration, no studies investigating these phenomena have been conducted in this taxonomic group. This study attempts to identify and visualize integrated character complexes in 14 taxa from the genera Camponotus and Colobopsis using statistical analyses of morphometry. Results The identified modules differ between castes: Minor workers have small heads and long extremities, while major workers have enlarged heads modified for defence, and short, thick appendages; extremities (legs and antennae) are strongly correlated in both worker castes. Gynes show weaker integration of extremities, but a strong correlation of mesosoma and eyes, and highly variable median ocellus size. Gynes infested by mermithid nematodes exhibit reduction of gyne-specific characters and altered patterns of phenotypic integration. Conclusion The integrated character complexes described herein can largely be interpreted as functional, caste-specific modules related to behavioural ecology and task allocation within ant colonies. This modular nature of the body plan is hypothesized to facilitate the evolution of novel phenotypes and thus contributes to the tremendous evolutionary success of ants. The study of these modules can help to further elucidate the evolution and ontogeny of castes in camponotine ants, as well as the effects of parasite infestation on the phenotype.

The relevance of the research the author connects to the necessity of selecting from the wide range of digital technologies the best instruments for economic development. The aims of the article are: to prove the interrelation between the settlement mechanisms and systems of the division of labour; the classification of monetary systems by the differences in the division of labour systems; the rationale the optimality of the public-state monetary and settlement system. The study was conducted using a dialectical method, positive and normative institutional and macroeconomic methods. The results of the study are possible to use unified methods of coordinating the sphere of basic industries and the sphere of innovative, creative work in a digital economy. The author proposes to coordinate the division of labour in the basic sectors and an inter-branch balance within the framework of an automated management system. To coordinate the types of innovative, creative work, a system of combining the spheres of social development through a “circular advance” is possible. These coordination instruments we can implement in the transition to the optimal monetary and settlement system. Monetary and settlement instruments for coordination of the sphere of real production can be used to achieve state regulation in the basic branches of the economy, and instruments for the formation of vertically integrated links, at least, in the sphere of innovative, creative work. The optimal monetary and settlement system proposes the existence of endogen money — the means of account. Such a system makes it possible to use the dynamic model of the inter-sectoral balance as an instrument of the digital economy in the sphere of basic production and instruments of endogenous, monetary-calculating ways of forming links in the vertical division of labour for the innovative, creative sphere. It promotes to innovative and creative work, overcoming market and planning constraints. Investigation of the possibilities of monetary and settlement instruments can generate discussion end can determine other areas of their use.