What insects are called social? Social insects. V. Homework

They form among themselves organized groups(societies) acting as a single whole. These are many hymenopterans - ants and bumblebees, as well as some bees and wasps. Termites, insects with incomplete metamorphosis, also acquired a similar way of life.

Family

At the heart of the group for everyone publicinsects there lies a family, but a family that has greatly expanded and transformed.

It consists of a fertile female (called the queen or queen) and her many sterile daughters, who form the worker caste. The queen is usually much larger than the workers, and her body is adapted to produce very large number eggs Workers feed the queen, build chambers for eggs and larvae, and nurse the larvae until they become chrysalises. In most cases, the queen lives longer than her infertile daughters (for ants 6-7 years, up to 18 years). Workers build and repair the nest, clean it, ventilate it, heat it, protect it from the outside and on the approaches to it. They scout for new sources of food, collect it, take it to the nest, where they can in different ways pack, preserve and process. They can look after mushroom plantations or their “milch animals.”

Social insects share food with each other all the time and everyone can use its reserves.

Each working individual has programs for all forms of labor necessary for the prosperity of the family. Typically, an insect switches from one type of labor to another depending on its age.

But in some social insects, workers are divided into subcastes - for example, foragers (food gatherers) and soldiers. The latter have a different body structure from foragers - powerful devices for defense and attack. They protect the nest and foragers, wage territorial wars, but cannot obtain food themselves.

In termites, the family composition is somewhat different: the worker caste consists of sterile individuals of both sexes, and their father is kept in the nest with the female and fertilizes her as needed.

Communication (communication)

Family members interact very clearly with each other and understand each other thanks to the innate communication system.

It is based on “language” - a complex code of signals, audio, visual, tactile and chemical. With the help of such a language it is impossible to convey any information (that is, two bees, unlike us, cannot “talk” about anything). But in strictly defined areas, very complex information can be conveyed. For example, returning from a new flowering tree to the hive, a scout bee, using an innate coding program, translates information about the direction to flowering tree, distance to it, abundance of flowers and view flowering plant into a set of standard movements that she will perform in front of other bees in the hive (the so-called dance). Forager bees, following the dancing bee and repeating all its turns, decode the dance, and their nervous system receives the information included in the dance by the scout.

For deciphering the informational meaning of the dance of bees, which has excited the human mind since ancient times, the German entomologist Karl Frisch was awarded the highest award in the scientific world - the Nobel Prize.

Uterus

Previously, people thought that insect society was like a state, and was controlled from some center. They thought that the family was ruled by the queen, which is why she was called the “queen.” Now we know that there is no such center, and all members of society interact on the basis of behavioral programs and information flows from individual to individual. Material from the site

The role of the queen in management is that she can lay eggs, from which either infertile workers will emerge (and they can have different appearances, if the species has sub-castes), or fertile males (drones) and females (future queens) . But workers can also partially control this process. In Hymenoptera, males are not used in the family. Their function: they must fly away, meet fertile females from other families on their mating flight and fertilize them. A fertilized female stores sperm throughout her life. This ensures that all individuals born in the family are half-blooded (that is, descended from the same father and mother) sisters and brothers.

Many species of highly developed insects (termites, bees, ants, wasps) live in complex communities. They have such a well-calibrated organization that sometimes they resemble a “superorganism” that is driven by the queen.

LARGE FAMILIES

In the numerous “states” of insects that form termites, ants, some species of bees and wasps, each member of the community - the queen, workers, soldiers and drones - performs its own, clearly regulated function. This division of labor is the main condition for the existence of the colony. Individual individuals of such a community are so dependent on each other that they can no longer exist independently. For example, worker termites are guarded by well-armed soldiers, who are unable to survive without workers, since they cannot obtain food on their own and depend on the workers to feed them. In turn, workers and soldiers are not able to reproduce. The function of reproducing offspring lies on the uterus , around which the colony is formed. The queen lives inside the nest, she is fed by workers, and soldiers protect her. All the bees of one colony, and there can be about 80,000 of them, are descendants of one queen and older sisters to newborn individuals, therefore they are all genetic twins. have a highly developed social instinct.

FORMATION OF THE COLONY

In autumn, with the onset of cold weather, all individuals of the wasp colony die, with the exception of fertilized queens. Shortly before the nest disappears, several mature pairs appear in the wasp colony, which fly away and mate. The males soon die, and the females, sensing the approach of winter, hide in warm places. In the spring, fertilized queens emerge from their shelters and each of them builds a nest of wood treated with special enzymes, consisting of 10-12 hexagonal cells. Eggs are placed in these cells of the uterus. The queen feeds the larvae with a gruel of semi-digested insects. The larvae grow quickly and soon develop into sterile worker wasps. After the workers are born, the queen no longer engages in any household chores, she only lays eggs, and the workers build new cells, take care of the eggs and raise the larvae. Social system Some species of ants and termites are somewhat more complicated. Worker ants are divided into several castes, depending on the work they perform. Some, for example, have the task of spraying enemies with formic acid, i.e., waging a kind of “chemical war,” while others are tasked with delivering nectar to the warehouse. Termite larvae are miniature copies of adult individuals. They develop into soldiers who have powerful jaws or a stinging apparatus that secretes a sticky substance that can become a trap for enemies. Termite workers and soldiers are wingless and blind individuals.

TYPES OF COMMUNICATION

In most insect species, with the exception of the breeding season, there is no need for communication. In social insects, on the contrary, communication between members of the colony is vital. Some species have developed a perfect information transmission system. Body language is often used for this. For example, honey bees, with the help of a special dance, very accurately inform their fellow bees in the hive about the road to the place where, according to them, the source of nectar is located. Ants use a different method. Having found a significant source of food, they return to the anthill, leaving behind a persistent odorous trail. Other ants, following this path, also leave their odorous marks, which are a guide for the rest of the colony. Pheromones play a very important role in the life activity of all types of social insects. Hungry larvae secrete a special substance that is a “feed me” signal. The queen secretes her pheromones and thus sends her own signal to the workers, reminding them of their duties. At certain intervals, the workers exchange gland secretions with the queen, and thus a close relationship is maintained between them A community of many insects that has lost a queen is doomed to death: the insects do not know what to do, for example, workers stop working, being left without a queen, they can grow a new one: for this they build special cells and feed the larvae with special food.

Termites

The social structure of termites consists of three types of insects: the queen (queen), soldiers and workers.
Uterus: lives in the center of the colony. It has a large body with hypertrophied ovaries (up to 10 cm long) that constantly produce eggs - many millions of eggs throughout its life. The winged male who fertilized the female dies. The queen lives for about 10 years.
Soldiers: Large and darker than workers, with large heads and extremely strong jaws. They guard and protect the colony from enemies.
Workers: small, soft-bodied insects white. They build a nest and maintain order in it. Unlike other social insects, worker termites come in both sexes.

Ants

Almost all ant species are social insects. They live in anthills.
Uterus: its only task is to take care of procreation and lay eggs.
Workers: wingless sterile males up to 30 mm long. They care for the queen and larvae, build and repair the anthill. If an anthill is attacked by enemies and there is no one to “fight”, then the workers defend the colony.
Soldiers: like workers, wingless and sterile, but somewhat larger, with large heads and powerful jaws. Their task is to protect the anthill from enemies

Bees

Bees live in communities of up to 60,000 insects.
Uterus: the only one in the entire colony. The queen controls the hive and lays eggs. It does not have organs for collecting pollen, so it is fed by workers.
Workers: they collect pollen and nectar from flowers, feed the young, queen, drones and protect the colony. They build honeycombs consisting of regular hexagonal cells, which serve as a storage facility for honey and an incubator for eggs. Working bees communicate information about food-rich places to each other using a special dance, accurately indicating the distance to them and the direction of flight.
Drones: their only purpose is to fertilize the uterus. The drones are fed by worker bees. After mating they die.

Wasps

Some social species wasps live in large colonies. Unlike bees and termites, the nest is used only for one summer. In the fall, all wasps die out. Only fertilized female founders overwinter and build a new nest in the spring. Wasp nests are built from cellulose - pieces of wood mixed with saliva.

Insects living in a single community: ants, wasps, bees and termites have always aroused special interest and surprise among people. This is reflected in numerous myths, legends and traditions. IN ancient greek mythology ants were a symbol of the goddess Demeter. And one of the most ancient images found in Europe was the Queen of the Hive. Social insects play a critical role in virtually all terrestrial ecosystems. Wasps and most ants act as predators, termites, especially in tropical ecosystems, as the most important destroyers of plant debris, and social bees are pollinators of many wild and cultivated plants and manufacturers of medicinal products.
Hierarchical intrafamily ties and complex structures of interaction between community members still attract close attention from scientists. Solve the riddle collective intelligence Humanity has been trying to find animals since ancient times, and judging by the fact that our ancestors used images of insects to image the gods, this suggests that this secret was understood by them and was actively used to control human communities.
What is the essence of this natural phenomenon?! What's going on?

BEES ARE SOCIAL INSECTS. In the world of animals with Nikolai Drozdov. Video (00:04:59)

Nests of social insects: bees, wasps and ants. Video (00:45:14)

Ants (Fig. 1) live on all continents except Antarctica. They live in families. An ant family can number from several hundred to millions of individuals. It depends on the species. They also vary in size - from the tiniest (about 2 mm) to giants (2-3 cm).

Ant families build their homes in the ground, in wood, under stones, some in trees (Fig. 2), and some are nomadic, that is, they move.

Rice. 2. Anthill ()

The common red ant is probably familiar to you. You have all seen their nests - anthills, which can be up to 1 meter high. But this is only the visible part, the hidden part is in the ground and may be even larger than the external one (Fig. 3).

Rice. 3. Anthill structure

There are always a lot of passages and chambers in anthills. This is not just a house, this is a whole city. In such a nest there are one or more queen females, main task which consists of laying eggs to replenish the population of the anthill. Young females are winged and shed their wings after mating. There are many known species of ants, but there is not one that leads a solitary lifestyle.

The majority of the anthill's population are workers, who do all the work. They build and repair the nest, ventilate it, entwin it, care for the larvae and pupae, and store food.

Soldier ants protect the anthill from enemies. There can be several thousand of them in a nest.

In tropical forests, where there are frequent floods, ants live in trees. The most amazing nests are made by tailor ants; they build hanging houses from leaves (Fig. 4).

Rice. 4. Anthill on a tree

Ants have very poor eyesight, but they have a well-developed sense of smell and touch. These organs are located on the antennae of ants. They use them to feel all objects, distinguish between friends and strangers, and also find the way to their anthill.

Many animals store food for future use, and ants know how to do housework, they have pets and mushroom gardens. Ants are the only creatures other than humans that have pets.

The most valuable to ants are their “cows,” aphids (Fig. 5).

Aphids suck plant sap and process it into sweet syrup. This is the syrup that ants love. Approaching the aphid, the ant tickles its abdomen with its antennae, milks the aphid, and it immediately secretes a drop of syrup; after licking it, the ant hurries home with the burden, where it deposits it in the pantry. Ants do not leave their “cows” unattended. They protect them from enemies, walk them if the sun is shining, build shelters for them and hide them.

More than a hundred are known various types ants breeding mushrooms. These are leaf-cutter ants. They cut off pieces of leaves, take them to the nest, chew them and grow special molds on this mass. Such ants can cause damage to plantings, as they gnaw leaves, buds and flowers.

There are harvester ants that eat only seeds. They know how to harvest plant grains and grind them into flour.

Ants are very hard-working creatures. They bring great benefits to the forest. In 12 hours, ants can bring 33,000 harmful caterpillars into their home. Therefore, where there are anthills, the forest is healthy and clean.

There are ants in the world that do not know how to work, but can only fight. These are Amazon ants. They are quite large, their length is about 1 cm. They steal pupae of ants of other species and subsequently use them as labor. The Amazon soldiers are not even able to feed themselves, so to do the work they are forced to recruit labor- slaves

There are dangerous ants, nomadic ants. They are called roving ants, or army ants, because their colony can contain thousands of ants. They do not build nests, but constantly roam and make rest stops so that their queen can lay thousands of eggs. When the eggs hatch, the army continues on its way, terrifying everyone. The ants carefully lift their larvae and continue their movement, attacking any living creature, which happened to be on their way.

Fire ants are considered one of the most dangerous. They inflict very painful bites that feel like burns. The poison they inject causes severe allergic reactions that can lead to death.

Pharaoh ants live in human homes. They were first discovered in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, but gradually spread throughout the world. These uninvited guests They cause a lot of trouble by eating people's food.

Ants are one of the longest-living insects. Working individuals can live from 1 to 5 years, queens - from 15 to 20 years. Thus, an anthill, in which young queens replace old ones, can stand in one place for hundreds of years.

Ants secrete a caustic liquid called formic acid. People use this acid to treat certain diseases. Residents of Mexico know how to extract honey from ants, which are called honey ants. These insects drink the sap of sweet oak. They store juice in their abdomen. They feed the larvae with it. It tastes like bee honey.

Probably every home has such an important product as honey. Honey is taken from beehives (Fig. 7), where it is stored in wax cells or honeycombs. Honey is made by bees (Fig. 6).

There are also many types of bees on earth. They live almost everywhere except Antarctica. Some bees live independently, others live together. By their specific smell, bees distinguish their own from strangers. Bees feed on nectar and pollen.

Honey is given to us by domestic bees. That's what they're called - honey bees. Each hive has its own queen bee. This is the most big bee, only she lays eggs. Other bees are workers. They care about order and construction. The queen lives up to 5 years, while worker bees live only 5 weeks in summer and up to six months in winter. There are also drones, these are males that appear in the family only before swarming (Fig. 8). They are distinguished from worker bees by their large eyes and thickness.

Swarming is the division of a bee colony to reproduce and form a new colony.

The hive is filled with honeycombs, which are divided into cells (Fig. 9). Some of them serve as nurseries where larvae grow, others serve as storerooms. Honey is the winter food of bees, because they do not sleep in winter, and plants do not bloom at this time of year. For this, bees work all summer, and these reserves are enough for both them and humans.

Among the bees there are scouts who are looking for new sources of food. If they are lucky, they use a special dance that tells how far to fly for nectar.

A working honey bee is easy to recognize - it is always in motion, flying from flower to flower, crawling around the flower, trying to collect as much as possible on the hairs covering its body. She cleans pollen from them into baskets with hind legs. A bee can carry a load that exceeds its weight by more than 300 times.

So, bees and ants work hard and harmoniously, and man has a lot to learn from them.

References

1. Samkova V.A., Romanova N.I. The world around us 1. - M.: Russian Word.
2. Pleshakov A.A., Novitskaya M.Yu. The world around us 1. - M.: Enlightenment.
3. Gin A.A., Faer S.A., Andrzheevskaya I.Yu. The world around us 1. - M.: VITA-PRESS.

1. Festival pedagogical ideas "Open lesson" ().
2. Detishka.ru ().

Homework

1. Draw an ant and a bee. What features of their structure did you notice?
2. Compare the lifestyle of an ant and a bee. How are they similar? How are they different?
3. *Ask your parents to show you an anthill in the forest and an apiary. What impressed you most? Discuss this with your classmates.

Target: reveal the structural features of the honey bee in connection with the social way of life, its role in nature and in human life.

Lesson type: a lesson in analytical thinking.

Lesson progress

group work

I. Motivational talk

(the lesson begins by asking the children questions about the family):

• What can you say about your family?
• How can you describe your family in one word?
• Why is your family the friendliest?

Family - seven selves, all together. Even though we study insects, family relationships is among them. These insects include bees and ants. Today we will talk about bees.

II . Intrigue

In the entire history of mankind, there is no more studied and, at the same time, more mysterious insect than the bee. Why? You will learn about this at the end of the lesson.

III. Memory

Work in groups:

Group 1: Development with complete transformation
Group 2: Development with incomplete transformation
Group 3: What are the similarities and differences between the 2 types of transformation. What is the advantage of development with complete transformation.

IV. Learning new material (return to intrigue)

Bees - social insects. Community - big family. They share food with each other and look after each other.
The uterus has a long body and an elongated abdomen. Drones average size with big eyes. Worker bees have devices for collecting pollen (brush, basket, mirror)
There are 100 thousand worker bees in a family; they clean the hive, collect nectar, care for the queen and larvae, and protect the hive from enemies. In a bee family, the main bee is the queen bee, who lays up to 2000 eggs per day. She lives for about five years. Drones do not take any part in the work. The main task is fertilization of the uterus. In the fall, worker bees expel the drones from the hive and they die. All care of the hive lies with the worker bees6. Growing up, each worker bee changes several “professions”. She builds honeycombs, cleans the cells, feeds the larvae, takes food from arriving bees and distributes it in the hive, ventilates the hive, guards it and finally begins to fly out of the hive for nectar. Bees communicate with each other through touch and secretions. Bees have a “dance language.” The complex behavior of social insects is instinct.
Bees build honeycombs. They crawl on flowers and pollen gets on the hairs of the insect's body. Then the bee cleans the pollen into the basket with help. Special brushes. Soon a ball of pollen will form there. Bee bread is pollen soaked in honey. Bees have an enlarged goiter - a honey goiter. Honey is formed there. A bee colony receives 100 kg of honey per year. (presentation)

V. Effective consolidation

Group 1: fill out the table:

Group 2: What are the similarities between a queen bee, a drone and a worker bee?

Group 3: What products do bees provide? How they are formed.

Tasks for all groups:

Explain the terms: queen, drone, mirror, honeycomb, basket, goiter, beebread, swarming, instinct, “language of bees.”

Explain the statements:

If bees die out on earth, humanity will have 4 years left to live.
Albert Einstein

Bees can tell their comrades where flowers with sweet nectar are located.
Aristotle

Drink comes from the bellies of bees different colors, which brings healing to people. Indeed, in this is a sign for a people who reflect.
Koran

VI. Unraveling the intrigue

In the entire history of mankind, there is no more studied and, at the same time, more mysterious insect than the bee. Moreover, it can be argued that man owes his origin to a large extent to the bee. After all, it was she who, over millions of years, tirelessly pollinating plants, developed and improved flora planets, and with it the animal world.

For many millennia it has lived next to humans, but nothing and no one can tame it. At the same time, it is the bee, which has a terrible weapon against enemies, that allows a person to unceremoniously invade his home and make any (within reason) changes and rearrangements in it, and once a year take away what is vital - his food.

VII. Homework assignment

Paragraph 28. Type arthropods, preparation for test work.

Lesson topic : Bees and ants are social insects. Beneficial insects, pest insects.Meaning in nature and human life.

Lesson objectives: reveal the structural features of the honey bee and ant in connection with the social way of life; talk about their role in nature and human life; reveal the diversity of insect pests, their negative role in human practice; outline the importance of insects in nature and human life.

Equipment: insect collection,multimedia projector, presentation, handouts: tables, sheets of paper, markers.

Lesson progress:

I. org. moment (1 min) II. Updating of reference knowledge(10 min) Test work with mutual verification.

Write down the test numbers, against each - correct options answer

Option 1.

A. Dragonflies B. Orthoptera C. Bugs

1. Two pairs of wings.
2. The larva has a mask.

Option 2.

What features are characteristic of insects from the order

A. Butterflies B. Diptera C. Hymenoptera

1. Development with complete transformation.
2. Development with incomplete transformation.
3. Two pairs of wings.
4. One pair of wings, the second is reduced (haleteres) and serves to stabilize the flight.
5. The first pair of wings are transformed into hard elytra, the second pair are leathery wings.
6. The front wings are denser than the hind wings.
7. The elytra are dense in front and soft in the back; the second pair of wings is used for flight.
8. There are small chitinous scales on the wings.
9. The oral apparatus of adult insects is of the sucking type.
10. Mouthparts of the licking type.
11. The oral apparatus in adult insects is of the piercing-sucking type.
12. In larvae oral apparatus gnawing type.
13. The hind legs of many representatives are of the jumping type.
14. The larva has a mask.

Option 1. A: 2,3,14; B: 2, 3,7,12,13; B: 2,6,11

Option 2. A: 1,3,8,9,12 B: 1,4,10,11 C: 1,3

III. Activation cognitive activity . (2 min)

Most insects lead a solitary lifestyle, but there are insects that live in large groups. What kind of insects are these? (bees, ants, termites) Such insects are called social and they live in families.

IV. learning new material(25min)

Teacher's story.

Which of these insects do you think have long become human pets? (bees)

Where do bees live? (hive)

Honey and wax along with our furs ancestors - Slavs were considered the main items of trade. Honey was used instead of sugar, wax was used in candles. In those days there were no apiaries yet, and people provided hollows of forest trees for bees - “bortni” - beekeeping. At the same time, the hives were often ruined.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Ukrainian landowner Pyotr Ivanovich Prokopovich first used the collapsible frame hive he invented, which is still in use today.

Let's look at what the bee family is.

Student message.Composition of a bee family. (presentation)

As the story progresses, students fill out the table.

Students independently fill out the table for the ant family section, using the textbook pp. 135-136.

Table. Composition of ant and bee families:

While completing the task, the teacher makes sure that the whole class is involved in the work, approaches the students, monitors the progress of the task, and makes corrections if necessary.

After completing the task, the teacher asks questions to the class:

• Did everyone complete the task?
• What difficulties arose when completing the task, what was not clear?

Bees and ants communicate with each other through touch and secretions. But only bees have a “dance language”. Video fragment.

What do you think? challenging behavior Can you call it reasonable? (No)

Their behavior is instinctive, unconscious.

Writing in a notebook. Instinct- a set of innate aspects of behavior, fixed hereditarily and characteristic a certain type animals.

Besides beneficial insects There are also pests of cultivated plants and carriers of human diseases.

The study of the material occurs in the process of conversation. Students work with handouts: tables, insects.

Exercise : determine which order your insect belongs to and what harm it causes to crop plants. Response Plan:

1. Squad name.

2. Name of the insect.

3. Signs of the squad.

4. Meaning.

Negative meaning of insects for humans

Students write down their answers in their notebooks. Several students are interviewed. Grades are given.

Additionally . What methods can be used to control pests?

During the conversation, it turns out that the proposed options can be divided into four groups:

Methods of human control against insects that harm him

V. Fixing the material.(4 min)

What insects did we meet today?

What characteristics are found in families?

What insects harm agricultural plants? Describe the life activity of some of them.

VI. Reflection. (1min) Draw your mood as a smiley face.

VII. D\Z Repeat topics in the arthropods section. Preparation for the test.

Application. The queen bee is the largest bee in the hive, 18-20 mm. It has a long abdomen with an ovipositor designed for constant laying of eggs. Cannot feed on his own. She is fed by worker bees with crop milk. There is always only one in the family. The uterus develops from fertilized eggs. Lives up to 5 years. When another queen appears, the old one flies away with some of the bees. This process is called swarming.

Drones are males, with long wings and large eyes. They develop from unfertilized eggs. Their task is to fertilize the uterus. They live for one season. In the fall they die, they are stung by worker bees or simply driven out of the hive.

Worker bees are sterile females. Workers provide the livelihoods of the whole family (collect food, care for the larvae, feed them, clean the hive, build honeycombs, and prepare honey). To perform these functions they have a number of devices:

• Oral apparatus;
• Body covered with villi;
• Honey goiter;
• The sting is a modified ovipositor;
• Hind limbs with baskets and brushes.