Encyclopedia of Social Insects

Christopher K. Starr was born in Canada in 1949, but has spent the bulk of his adult life in the tropics of Asia and the New World. He was introduced to insects one day in 1954 by his grandmother, who happened to ask "Christopher, would thee like to go bug collecting?" What they found that day so amazed him that it grew into a lifetime in entomology. As an undergraduate in 1972, he reached the conviction that social insects are the most interesting feature of the known universe, a view from which he has not wavered. His main area of expertise is social wasps, but has been his pleasure alongside these to contribute original findings to our knowledge of social bees, ants, termites and solitary wasps.  After living and working in various countries, he moved to Trinidad & Tobago in 1991, where he retired as Professor of Entomology at the University of the West Indies in 2014.  As a friend of biodiversity and an adversary of the cold, he has every intention of remaining in this neotropical continental island.

• Aculeata: phylogeny and classification.- african honey bees.- Allodapini.- Allomones.- Aneuretus simoni.- bees: ecological roles.- bees: phylogeny and classification.- brood care.- brood-stimulation theory [in army ants].- bullet ant (Paraponera clavata) and Dinoponera.- cape honey bee.- carpenter ants (Camponotus).- caste.- caste differentiation: ants.- caste differentiation: genetic and epigenetic factors.- dacetine ants.- dampwood termites (Archotermopsidae).- defensive strategies.- Diacamma.- Dolichoderinae.- drywood termites (Kalotermitidae).- Ectatomma.- eastern hive bee (Apis cerana).- eusociality.- exocrine glands.- extra-floral nectaries.- fire ants (Solenopsis in part.- Foraminini.- Formicinae.- fossil social insects.- fungus-gardening ants.