Toshihisa Yashiro

TL;DR: A previously unknown termite breeding system in which both parthenogenesis and sexual reproduction are conditionally used is identified, showing how eusociality can lead to extraordinary reproductive systems and provide important insights into the advantages and disadvantages of sex.

TL;DR: This novel function of lysozyme as a termite pheromone illuminates the profound influence of pathogenic microbes on the evolution of social behaviour in termites and represents a major step forward in, and result in the broadening of, the search for recognition phersomones.

TL;DR: The results demonstrated that the overlap of the cellulose digestion niche between termites and the fungus sharing the same chemicals provided the opportunity for the origin of termite egg mimicry by the fungus, suggesting that pheromone compounds might have originally evolved within other life history contexts, only later gaining function in chemical communication.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that parental phenotypes influence the social status of offspring not through genetic inheritance but through genomic imprinting in termites, which solves the puzzle of why parthenogenetically produced daughters carrying only maternal chromosomes exclusively develop into queens.

TL;DR: It is discovered that queens of the termite close micropyles (openings for sperm entry) of their eggs to produce parthenogenetic offspring in the presence of kings, the first identification, to the authors' knowledge, of the mechanism through which females control egg fertilization over time in diploid animals.