caste
10
6.9
- noun
- /kæst/
- Specialized
:
casta
- The past four decades of research on social insects have seen enormous progress in our understanding of communication, caste, colony life cycles, and colony self-organization of the social insects.
- caste determination
- morphological castes
- worker caste
Examples
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The queen bee is the leader of the entire caste in a hive, responsible for reproduction.
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To fight against the warrior caste is one thing.
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The warrior caste cannot be allowed to win this war.
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Only the warrior caste could actually turn on one of their own.
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"If you need to surrender something, ask the religious caste to do it for you.
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The ship will become a monument to our caste... and to our willingness to do all that we can to protect our people.
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Several predictions may allow us to test who is in control of caste determination in the colony.
Academic text (1999) -
The highly specialized worker castes in ants represent the pinnacle of social organization in the insect world.
Blog text (32) -
Eusociality, the care across generations of the offspring of a reproductive caste by a nonreproductive or less reproductive worker caste, is the most advanced level of social life in insects.
Academic text (2008) -
In a bee colony, the worker caste gathers food and cares for the young.
Compounds
Surface Forms
Etymology
Caste is also used for ants, bees, and other social insects because people borrowed the word to describe groups that are born or made to do one job, like workers or queens. So an insect caste is a group of animals with a special role in the colony.