eusocial

1 9.9

Living in a group where animals work together, have different jobs, and help raise young

adjective
/juːˈsoʊʃəl/

Specialized

: eusocial

A good example of the predicted association between high relatedness and high skew comes from the eusocial naked mole-rat, Heterocephalus glaber.
eusocial species
eusocial insect
eusocial wasp

Examples

With a shift in the available environment in space or time, eusocial behavior would become the norm.

Academic text (2008)
Interestingly, potential conflicts over partitioning of reproduction are still present in many eusocial insect societies with morphological castes.

Academic text (1999)
In that generation, the eusocial colony originates.

Academic text (2008)
Social organization of ants, bees, and wasps is built around reproductive specialization: most eusocial insect colonies have a single queen.

Blog text (31)
Many species of insects, such as bees and ants, are eusocial, living in organized colonies with specific roles.
In modern terminology, ants and bees are eusocial, which means 'truly social.'
Naked mole rats exhibit eusocial behavior by living in large colonies where they share responsibilities and care for their offspring.

Antonyms

solitary

83 4.6

Being alone and not with other people or things

How Social

eusocial

Specialized

1 9.9

gregarious

1 7.0

social

286 1.0

solitary

1 7.2

Surface Forms

eusocial positive

Morphology

eusocial = social (semi-transparent) = eu + social

The link to 'social' is obvious but the Greek combining form 'eu-' is not a common standalone morpheme and the technical biological sense 'highly organized/true social' may not be clear to general learners.

Etymology

Eusocial comes from the Greek part eu- meaning 'true' or 'good' and the familiar word social. So eusocial literally means 'truly social' and describes animals like bees and termites that live in very organized groups, share work, and care for the young.