Ebi Antony George, Zimai Li

Division of labour, both reproductive and non-reproductive, lies at the heart of social insects’ global success. While the reproductive aspects of division of labour have long attracted attention, advances in analytical, molecular and computational tools now allow us to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanistic underpinnings and consequences of non-reproductive aspects of this phenomenon. In particular, we can now track multiple individuals over extended periods of time and identify the genetic and molecular processes underlying task specialisation amongst workers. This symposium will bring together researchers working on non-reproductive division of labour across the theoretical and empirical domains to discuss the current state of the art in the field. We will focus on up-and-coming areas of research including how social interactions and hormonal regulation steer behavioural decisions, and how task specialisation among workers benefits group
efficiency and energy expenditure. The symposium will culminate in a panel discussion bringing together all speakers to discuss challenges and identify key areas of focus for advancing our understanding of division of labour in social insect societies.

Klaus Hartfelder, Natália de Souza Araujo

Their biological diversity makes the stingless bees (Meliponini) a group of interest for the understanding of life history variation in the context of advanced sociality. In this symposium we will provide a forum to discuss insights into their reproductive biology and division of labor in the context of recent advances in genomics insights. A keynote address will provide a general perspective on these bees, followed by a series of contributions that go back and forth between natural history observations and genomics and gene expression analyses related to division of labor and worker reproduction. While most of the presentations will focus on Neotropical stingless bees, with this symposium proposal we expect to also attract contributions on ongoing research on Australasian and African stingless bees, the latter of which are clearly understudied.

Tim Linksvayer & Arjuna Rajakumar

Reproductive division of labor, the foundation of eusociality, varies markedly across social insects—from colonies with barely distinguishable reproductive castes to those with dramatic queen-worker dimorphism. How has this variation in reproductive division of labor evolved across social insect lineages, and what behavioral, molecular, and developmental mechanisms regulate these diverse systems?

Recent research integrates comparative genomics, phylogenetic comparative methods, and a range of mechanistic studies to unravel the evolution and regulation of reproductive division of labor. Phylogenetic comparative analyses elucidate evolutionary trajectories and potential ecological drivers behind transitions in reproductive division of labor across lineages. Comparative genomic analyses identify genetic changes putatively associated with these trait changes. Further studies within single species or clades further identify and validate specific molecular and physiological pathways and social mechanisms regulating division of labor within insect societies. 

This symposium will survey and synthesize interdisciplinary perspectives to build an integrative understanding of the evolution and regulation of reproductive division of labor across social insects. By integrating ultimate and proximate approaches across the major social insect lineages, we aim to foster collaborative approaches to fundamental questions about the origin, elaboration, and regulation of one of evolution’s most remarkable innovations.

Luisa María Jaimes Niño, Thomas Anthony Keaney

Life-history evolution explains how diverse phenotypes arise and are shaped by selection to maximize reproductive success. In social insects, the constraints and selective pressures driving the evolution of life-history traits can only be fully understood within a social context. In non-social organisms, resource limitation often imposes trade-offs, for example when investment in maintenance and growth comes at the cost of fecundity. However, in social insects, colony-level selection can alter these trade-offs — early reproductive investment in colony growth often enhances later reproductive success through the production of new colonies. This symposium aims to bring together researchers employing behavioral, molecular and theoretical approaches to explore how sociality has shaped life-history evolution. We will discuss traits such as lifespan and ageing (including the onset of senescence), timing and size at maturity at both individual and colony levels, and alternative reproductive strategies. By integrating diverse perspectives, we seek to advance the discussion of how life-history evolution proceeds in the superorganism, with a particular focus on how phenotypes are inherently shaped by the social context.

Hongmei Li-Byarlay & Nobuaki Mizumoto

Social insects dominate many ecosystems due to their sheer biomass, ecological roles as pollinators, predators, and decomposers, and the complex organization of their colonies. Much attention has been directed at mature colonies, focusing on caste regulation, reproductive division of labor, and colony-level efficiency. However, this emphasis can obscure the crucial early stages of colony development, where a single or small group of reproductive individuals must successfully navigate mating, nest initiation, and early brood care to ensure colony establishment. These foundational phases—ranging from mate-finding and dispersal strategies to nest construction, initial resource acquisition, and incipient worker behavior—are pivotal yet underexplored aspects of social insect biology.

This symposium aims to spotlight the behaviors, challenges, and evolutionary implications of early-stage colony life, emphasizing how these stages shape and constrain the later success of mature colonies. By inviting contributions across taxa with diverse research approaches, we seek to bridge gaps between behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology, and developmental studies. The topic holds wide relevance for the scientific community and promises to foster interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration. A deeper understanding of colony founding not only enriches our perspective on social evolution but also informs conservation and management strategies for ecologically significant social insects.

Silvio Erler, Enikő Csata, Sara D. Leonhardt

Abiotic (e.g., climate, environmental toxins) and biotic (e.g., parasites, pathogens, invasive species, landscape composition, low food diversity) factors determine the development and reproductive success of solitary and social insect populations. These factors influence the animals’ nutrition, i.e., quality and quantity of their diets. Food composition is also a major driver for the establishment of parasites, the functionality of the host’s immune system and microbial communities of the digestive systems, and therefore fundamental in mediating health effects. To assess how insects respond to and cope with environmental change, it is essential to understand how they deal with nutritionally variable landscapes, e.g., how they sense and evaluate food sources and how this affects their feeding behavior. Once consumed, micro- and macronutrients have different functions in physiology, metabolism, and resilience against diseases and environmental stressors. This may result in different trade-offs influencing the insect’s fitness. Here, we want to address and discuss state-of-the-art knowledge on mechanisms and routes of nutrition and health, from food perception and foraging decisions, via metabolic processing and interaction with stressors, to effects on survival and reproduction. We further want to elucidate how their functionality is affected by changes in the availability of diverse and good quality food sources.

Eva Schultner & Philip Kohlmeier

Brood – eggs, larvae and pupae – are an integral part of social insect colonies. Often numerically dominant, their needs strongly influence adult behavior and modulate colony-level traits such as brood care and nest construction. Brood can also contribute actively to colony functioning, for instance by aiding in food processing, or engage in selfish behaviour that may impose additional costs to the colony. Despite these effects and their across-taxa diversity in morphology, physiology and behavior, developing stages have typically been overlooked in studies of social insects. As the ecological and evolutionary significance of brood becomes increasingly evident, interest in the mechanisms and function of their social role is growing. This symposium is dedicated to the biology of these key colony members and we call for contributions covering any aspect of individual and collective brood biology, from development, to genetics, morphology, physiology, behaviour, and communication.

Anna Friedel, Antonella Soro

Extended maternal care is considered to play a fundamental role in the evolution of sociality. The mechanistic underpinnings and evolutionary processes underlying parental care and the emergence of social behaviours remain an area of active research. Across diverse taxa, maternal behaviours such as guarding, provisioning, and protection influence offspring survival, phenotype, developmental trajectories and gene expression. The timing and degree of maternal care ultimately influence fitness outcomes for the mother and may provide the opportunity for overlapping generations. Therefore, maternal care is not only a driver of offspring survival but may also act as a crucial step in the emergence of cooperative behaviours and eusociality. We seek contributions that explore maternal care from multiple perspectives, including the role of maternal care in shaping offspring morphology and behaviour, the influence of maternal care on the evolutionary trajectory of sociality, molecular and epigenetic mechanisms linking maternal care to gene expression, comparative perspectives across insect taxa, from solitary to eusocial species, and plasticity in maternal care strategies and their ecological determinants. By integrating empirical findings with theoretical developments, this symposium aims to highlight how maternal investment influences offspring survival, developmental trajectories, and behaviour—potentially shaping the origins and maintenance of sociality.

Ben Pyenson, Chris Jernigan, Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy

Social behavior varies wildly across insects, ranging from simple forms of cooperation to eusociality within and across many lineages. This large amount of variation provides an incredible hurdle when trying to identify a common set of mechanisms that may give rise to the shared behaviors we observe across social insects. In recent years tremendous leaps in technology allow for unparalleled investigation of the nervous system at the scale of genes and single cells.  In this symposium we bring together experts across taxa and scales of inquiry from molecular biology to neurophysiology to discuss the current knowledge of the mechanisms that accommodate the highly successful social lifestyles of varied insects. We hope this symposium will stimulate integrative models of parallel and convergent social evolution across taxa.

Bitao Qiu, Judith Korb

The year 2026 marks the 115th anniversary of William Morton Wheeler’s seminal paper, “The Ant Colony as an Organism”, in which he first articulated the striking parallels between social insect colonies and multicellular organisms. This milestone presents a unique opportunity to revisit and critically evaluate this influential concept in light of contemporary research. In this symposium, we will bring together researchers from diverse fields—including behavioral, evolutionary, developmental, and genomic biology—to explore the extent to which social insect colonies function as integrated biological entities. By examining up-to-date evidence and novel perspectives, we aim to assess how well the organismal analogy holds and where its limitations lie. The symposium will conclude with an open discussion addressing fundamental questions: To what degree do social insect colonies and multicellular organisms share common principles? Are there overarching mechanisms driving major evolutionary transitions, from solitary to eusocial life and from unicellular to multicellular existence? Can shared proximate or ultimate causes be identified across these levels of biological organization? By promoting dialogue among researchers from varied backgrounds, this symposium will foster interdisciplinary exchange and generate new perspectives on the nature of social insects and their evolutionary significance. We anticipate that the discussions will lead to collaborative efforts and novel insights. Based on the outcomes of the symposium, we plan to submit a proposal for a special issue dedicated to this topic.

Daniele Carlesso, Chelsea Cook, Kaitlin M.Baudier, Chinmay Hemant Joshi, Stephan Popp, Daniel Charbonneau

Social insects exhibit some of the most striking examples of collective behaviour in the animal kingdom. From foraging trail formation and cooperative transport, to nest construction and self-assembly, these behaviours emerge from simple, locally-mediated interactions of colony members acting without centralised control. This symposium will explore the mechanistic foundations of collective behaviour in social insects, with a particular focus on how groups respond to and remain resilient to ever-changing environmental conditions. Animals live in ever-changing environments, where being able to flexibly adapt to new conditions is vital for survival. Social insects are of particular interest, as individuals that are evaluating the environment must communicate, directly and indirectly, with others to integrate information and organize collective responses. This offers profound insights into the principles of resilience, robustness and adaptability in decentralized systems. By focusing on both proximate mechanisms (how individual perceive, communicate and act) and ultimate consequences (resilience, flexibility and survival), we aim to integrate research across disciplines – including behaviour, ecology, neuroethology, physiology, computer science and robotics – to create new connections and advance our quantitative understanding of how individual actions scale into group-level organisation across biological scales. We also welcome comparative perspectives that link insights from social insects to other complex systems, including organ networks, microbial communities, and ecosystems.

Laure-Anne Poissonnier, Tomer Czaczkes, Mathieu Lihoreau

Research on insect cognition is experiencing a revolution. In just a few decades, insects have been suggested to learn concepts, have a sense of numbers, solve complex navigation problems, develop cultures, use tools, and may be conscious and display emotions. This diversification of topics in insect cognition research is accompanied by a diversification of study models, with more and more species with different ecologies and social structures being investigated. All these observations provide new opportunities for discussing the evolution of insect cognition and animal intelligence in general. In this symposium, we will gather researcher working on different aspects of cognition and in different species in order to engage these discussions. Such crosstalk across methodologies, from purely laboratory-based learning assays to field studies investigating cognition in natural environments, and taxa will foster a deeper understanding of the cognitive abilities of insects and their ecological and evolutionary significance.

Giulia Scarparo, Susanne Foitzik

Social insects serve as model systems for studying complex phenotypes, including variation in sex, caste, and social organization. Traditionally, such diversity has been attributed to phenotypic plasticity, where a single genotype can produce distinct phenotypes in response to environmental conditions. However, growing evidence suggests that many traits once considered plastic, such as queen number and morphology, have a genetic basis. The discovery of supergenes—large, non-recombining genomic elements, often formed by inversions—has highlighted their central role in regulating complex phenotypes, while ecological factors continue to shape their distribution and maintenance. Nevertheless, many social insects exhibit entirely plastic intra-specific phenotypic variation, particularly in caste determination. Investigating social insects whose phenotypic variation arises from plasticity, genetic control, or their interaction can provide critical insights into social evolution. This symposium welcomes contributions exploring complex phenotypic variation within and across social insect populations, with an emphasis on both genetic and environmental determinants.

Purbayan Ghosh, Grant Navid Doering

Collective decision-making is fundamental to the success of social insects, enabling ants, bees, wasps, and termites to integrate individual contributions into cohesive group-level outcomes that enhance survival and drive ecological dominance. This symposium explores how these diverse taxa navigate collective decisions through an integrated complementary lens of molecular, behavioral, and computational approaches. By bridging disciplines, we aim to synthesize how genetic and neurophysiological mechanisms (molecular), interaction networks and consensus dynamics (behavioral), and models of self-organization (computational) collectively explain decision-making in these superorganisms. This multidisciplinary perspective not only illuminates the adaptability and resilience of social insects but also advances our understanding of decentralized problem-solving and collective intelligence in nature.

Etya Amsalem, Juergen Liebig

Chemical communication is a fundamental mode of interaction in many organisms, particularly social animals, and underlies some of the most advanced social behaviors observed in insects. While responses to pheromones are often assumed to be innate, growing evidence suggests that insects also incorporate information gained through learning and experience-driven mechanisms.

Talks will highlight recent advances in neuroethology, behavioral ecology, and chemical ecology, focusing on how insects process both innate and experience-based chemical information in social contexts. The symposium will emphasize empirical findings and theoretical frameworks, fostering cross-disciplinary insights into the evolution and mechanisms of chemical communication in social insects and the diverse strategies they use to regulate behavior within complex social systems.

This symposium will explore how chemical signals and cues mediate social behavior and how individuals learn and respond to them in dynamic social environments. We aim to integrate perspectives across insect taxa to examine the roles of pheromones, signature mixtures, and learned olfactory cues and signals in shaping social organization, reproductive dynamics, and cooperative behaviors.

Uli Ernst, Jan Buellesbach

Chemical communication is the cornerstone of social organization in insects, governing behaviours such as foraging, nestmate recognition, caste differentiation, and colony defence. This symposium will bring together researchers exploring the differentiation, ecological contexts, molecular architecture and evolutionary trajectories of chemical signalling modalities in insects with different levels of social organisation. The symposium will appeal to evolutionary biologists, chemical ecologists, neuroethologists, and applied researchers interested in insect behaviour and communication. By fostering cross-disciplinary discussions, this symposium aims to advance our understanding of how chemical communication underpins sociality in insects and its broader implications in ecology and evolution. Moreover, with a combination of fundamental and applied research, we would like to stimulate interdisciplinary discussion. Applications of chemical ecology may help to control invasive social insects that pose great risks to native ecosystems as well as to human health.

Luca Pietro Casacci, Francesca Barbero

Vibrations and sounds constitute a profound communicative dimension, sometimes overlooked, but essential for collective coordination. In many species of ants, wasps, bees, termites and other social insects, these signals convey information related to recruitment, colony defence, larval nutrition, up to caste identity or behavioural modulation.

These emissions, often produced by non-specialized morphological structures, are perceived by highly sensitive sensory organs. Far from being marginal channels, vibroacoustic signals have a strong adaptive value and can act in synergy with chemical, tactile or visual signals.

The symposium aims to collect contributions that explore the function, evolution and plasticity of vibroacoustic and multimodal signals, also including non-eusocial species. Comparative, experimental, and neuroethological approaches are welcome, as well as studies that consider the ecological context in which these signals are used. The scope is to stimulate an integrated view of vibroacoustic communication as a key element in the evolution of social complexity.

Cintia Akemi Oi, Seirian Sumner

The Anthropocene is changing the chemical, visual and auditory environment for insects. These changes are contributing to globally declining populations, resulting in losses of key ecosystem services. There is an urgent need to better understand the mechanisms by which insects sense their environment, which influences in how they behave. The aim of this symposium is to bring together insights from recent research on the genomics of insect sensory systems, and its consequences on behaviour. The combination of talks will combine fields including morphology, neurobiology, genomics and behavioural data. There is a need of studies comprising basic biology in combination to modern techniques as omics. This basic science is required to develop predictive tools to forecast the impacts of the Anthropocene on insect sensory mechanisms and manage their roles as nature-based solutions for ecosystem health.

Scott Powell, Brendon E. Boudinot

The study of morphology is central to many of the fundamental questions about the ecological dominance and evolutionary success of social insects. Morphology is a distinct level of biological organization that represents the prior and present interactions of an organism’s genome with the environment. We are currently experiencing an important shift in our capacity to analyze morphology, spurred in part by broader comparative perspectives, unprecedented access to specimens, and by new technologies that can generate “phenomic” scale data. Whether driven by expanded and accelerated collection of morphology data, or advanced three-dimensional visualization at astonishing resolutions, these new data underpin renewed opportunities to advance a wide range of integrative questions. This symposium will bring together a diversity of researchers building rich and multimodal morphological datasets—from exceptionally broad paleontological and present day sampling to automated quantification of key functional traits—that are used to break new ground in our understanding of social insect evolution and ecology. In addition to highlighting the power of novel morphological data in social insect research, we will explore where the most significant knowledge gaps and challenges remain, and the greatest opportunities to further advance the field

Jean-Christophe Sandoz, Julie Carcaud

The biology of social insects, from social communication, learning and memory to division of labor, has been studied for many years using ecological observations, behavioural experiments as well as traditional chemical ecology and neuroscience approaches. However, the recent development of genome editing techniques has opened new research avenues for the study of social insect biology. In this symposium, we will gather scientists who are developing these new approaches based on transgenic manipulations, to study pheromonal communication, learning and memory or sex determination. While presenting the extraordinary possibilities opened by these new approaches, the presentations will also explain the specific difficulties of using these tools in social insects. The symposium will discuss the various ways to mitigate these difficulties.

Andreia Teixeira, Antonella Soro

For some time, numerous studies have used large datasets to understand different proximate and ultimate evolutionary mechanisms in social insects. This research field has been built upon a broad array of technologies, from microsatellites to long-read sequencing, and more recently to a combination of transcriptomics, epigenomics, metabolomics and other-omics. Using these techniques, our community has generated multiple datasets and currently explores and expands methods to better comprehend the complex traits shaping the biology of diverse social (and non-social) organisms. However, several fundamental questions remain. What could be the best approach to combine and explore results across different omics layers? How can we study whole transcriptomes or methylation patterns, as well as their underlying regulatory changes, as a phenotypic trait per se? What can the intrinsic variation and noise within these datasets tell us, and how can we interpret the plasticity of these biological systems? This symposium will focus on how to move away from extensive candidate lists, arbitrary thresholds and the endless search for “golden genes”. We aim to foster a discussion among researchers working with innovative methods – machine learning, network analysis and beyond – and move the field forward into a more integrative understanding of social insect ecology and evolution.

Elizabeth Evesham, Christoph Kurze, Patrick Krapf, Sabine Nooten

Social insects comprise a large part of terrestrial biodiversity, and they are integral to many ecological processes. Their evolutionary success is driven by their intricate social structures, ranging from differing numbers of queens to complex collective decision making to remarkable phenotypic plasticity. These characteristics have enabled them to respond and adapt to environmental changes. However, they are now facing unprecedented environmental challenges in our rapidly changing world, and our understanding of social insects’ responses and resilience and their challenges to rising temperatures and extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, fires, and floods is limited. While some species are under increasing pressure, others may thrive in this changing world. In this symposium, we aim to bring together speakers from diverse backgrounds, different career stages, and diverse perspectives to provide a comprehensive understanding of the future trajectories of social insects in a changing world.

Elia Guariento, Heike Feldhaar, Thomas Parmentier, Elva J.H. Robinson, Giacomo Santini, Morgan Morrison, Gabrielle Mclaughlin, Klara Leander Oh, Nerea Perez Montes

Social insects are diverse ecosystem engineers and service providers crucial for maintaining ecosystem stability through processes like pest control, pollination, and seed dispersal. Yet, many species are declining due to habitat loss, climate change, and other intensifying anthropogenic pressures. Developing effective monitoring and conservation strategies is vital for maintaining their biodiversity and the ecosystem services they provide.

This symposium will explore the latest research on social insect conservation, focusing on both theoretical frameworks and applied measures. A significant obstacle to conservation is the lack of consistent monitoring approaches and regional assessments of population trends. Even where data exists—such as for bumblebees and conspicuous ant species through citizen science—inconsistencies hinder cross-regional comparisons. Social insect colonies often provide habitat or resources directly for other species, e.g. the myrmecophiles that depend on many ant species or kleptoparasitic bee species, and there is little understanding of how conservation actions can be tuned to maximally benefit the multitude of taxa that depend on the peculiar microhabitat of social insect nests.

We are particularly interested in talks that discuss monitoring strategies utilizing diverse resources like citizen science data and remote sensing. We welcome contributions that address innovative interventions, emerging solutions, and the outcomes of conservation actions.  By bringing together a range of researchers, the symposium aims to facilitate knowledge exchange, identify synergies, and foster collaboration, showcasing work that promotes the long-term sustainability of wild social insect populations.

Cleo Bertelsmeier, Uli Ernst, Heather Mattila, Sara Miller, Gard Otis, Ruan Veldtman, Erin Wilson Rankin

Representatives of all ‘classical’ social insects, i.e. ants, bees, wasps, and termites, have become invasive around the globe. Social insect invaders pose threats to ecosystems, cause economic damage, and may impact human health. For instance, invasive yellow-legged Asian hornets, Vespa velutina, are spreading across North America, Europe, and Asia, where they are disrupting beekeeping and pollinator services. Increased international trade is driving translocations of social insects into non-native habitats, where they can be difficult to eradicate due to their cooperative lifestyle and resource demands. In this light, insights into the biology of social insects as invasives may prove useful to predict, prevent, eradicate, or manage accidental introductions. We encourage potential speakers worldwide to contribute to a symposium about the phenomenon of social insect invasions. Likely topics of presentations include invasive behavior, control strategies, genetic factors contributing to invasions, historic and current biogeographies, and more. This symposium will be of relevance to researchers with both academic and applied interests.

Cristina Castracani, Julie Koch Sheard

Citizen Science (CS), the active engagement of volunteers in scientific research is a promising approach for expanding scientific knowledge and increasing scientific interest among the public. Over the past decades, there has been a rapid increase in the diversity and scale of CS from unstructured, opportunistic projects centered around large databases such as iNaturalist, to semi-structured bioblitz events for mapping species diversity in an area to structured, experiment-based projects with extensive protocols for exploring more complex research questions. Within the field of social insect research, most citizen science projects have focused on pollinators, but examples also exist for ants and wasps. In this symposium we will showcase how citizen science has been successfully implemented in the study of social insects in order to inspire more researchers to implement citizen science in their research and promote discussion on best practices and opportunities.

Lena Wilfert, Lumi Viljakainen

Social insects present an excellent environment to any parasite or pathogen that can enter a colony. Particularly with the advent of de novo sequencing, a vast number of potential pathogens has been discovered. The field is beginning to unravel the environmental, phylogenetic and immunological barriers that are allowing some of these pathogens to be wide-ranging generalists, and are restricting others to a single or few host species. Such barriers could include transmission networks, abiotic or biotic stressors, the host’s microbiome, immunological reactions and the host or pathogen phylogeny. With this symposium, we want to bring together researchers working on different organisms from the field to the lab, to allow cross-fertilization between ecologists, geneticists and immunologists to advance this field. Key questions to be addressed in the symposium include (1) Which barriers restrict the host-range of a pathogen at a host or environmental level? (2) How does colony structure or intra-nest social interactions influence the transmission of pathogen, and vice-versa?

Aleš Buček, Taisuke Kanao

The exceptional microhabitat of social insect colonies, with their abundant yet fiercely defended resources, has served as a driving force in the evolution of countless inquiline arthropod lineages and adaptations. Inquilines—i.e., organisms dependent on social insect colonies—span the full spectrum of symbiosis, from parasitism to mutualism, and provide a remarkable model system for studying adaptations to symbiosis, mimicry, defense, convergent evolution, and more. The specialization of researchers to either hymenopteran or on non-hymenopteran social insects is inevitable, but it limits our understanding of the similarities and differences among the independently evolved social insect groups. Such specialization with all its advantages and disadvantages exists also among researchers studying inquilines. This symposium aims to mediate a dialogue between the researchers of myrmecophiles, termitophiles, and other “X-philes” to advance the study at the ecological, phenotypic and genetic level of both the convergent and unique natural histories of these arthropod lineages.

Olav Rueppell, Esmaeil Amiri

Diseases have long been recognized as playing pivotal roles in social insect biology because social insect colonies are resource-rich and usually densely populated by a larger number of genetically similar individuals. Viruses form an important group of disease-causing agents, although they do not harm their hosts in all instances. Despite the increasing realization of how prevalent and important viruses are in most biological systems, viruses are only beginning to be explored in social insects, with the exception of commercially important honey bees. This presents an opportune time to highlight the current state of knowledge and efforts to expand that knowledge. We therefore anticipate that our symposium will be of interest to a lot of IUSSI members and we will include presentations that exemplify recent progress in “social insect virology” and pave the way forward. With a mixture of talks on the honey bee model and on a range of other social insects, we seek to identify common themes and differences across social insect taxa. We will welcome applied and fundamental studies to make the symposium broadly relevant for social insect ecology, evolution, conservation, and agriculture.