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 Barry Wellman
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  S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC              NetLab Director
  Centre for Urban & Community Studies           University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue          Room 418          Toronto Canada M5S 2G8
  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman            fax:+1-416-978-7162
  Updating history:     http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
         Elvis wouldn't be singing "Return to Sender" these days
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Predator Pressures Maintain Bees' Social Life , Innovations-report

Excerpts: The complex organisation of some insect societies is thought to
have developed to such a level that these animals can no longer survive on
their own. Research (...) suggests that rather than organisational,
genetic, or biological complexity defining a 'point of no return' for
social living, pressures of predation create advantages to not living
alone. The ancient systems of sociality in bees, wasps, termites, and ants
seem to have become an obligatory way of life for these organisms as there
are almost no examples of species reverting to solitary lifestyles. (...)

* [5] Predator Pressures Maintain Bees' Social Life, 2007/12/21,
Innovations-report * Contributed by [6] Atin Das
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/life_sciences/report-100562.html

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More 'Altruistic' Punishment In Larger Societies , Proc. Biol. Sc.

Excerpts: If individuals will cooperate with cooperators, and punish
non-cooperators even at a cost to themselves, then this strong reciprocity
could minimize the cheating that undermines cooperation. (...) Here we
present new results that expand on a previous report from a large
cross-cultural project. This project has already shown that there is
considerable cross-cultural variation in punishment and cooperation. Here
we test the hypothesis that population size (and complexity) predicts the
level of third-party punishment. Our results show that people in larger,
more complex societies engage in significantly more third-party punishment
than people in small-scale societies.

* [17] More 'Altruistic' Punishment In Larger Societies, F. W. Marlowe ,
J. C. Berbesque, 2007/12/18, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2007.1517, Proceedings B:
Biological Sciences * Contributed by [18] Atin Das

http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/p542u4871xu4324g/?p=75e8b8ba9e5b42788a1bc77
f15c2b597&pi=4

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