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| Foreword | |
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| Acknowledgements | |
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| Introduction to the Bathyergidae | |
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| Background and historical perspectives | |
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| The family and its systematics | |
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| Distribution | |
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| Phylogenetic relationships within the family | |
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| Phylogeographic relationships | |
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| The subterranean niche | |
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| Burrow architecture | |
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| Physical and sensory adaptations to life underground | |
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| Physiological adaptations to the subterranean niche | |
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| Activity patterns in African mole-rats | |
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| Behavioural adaptations to a subterranean lifestyle | |
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| Energetics and the effects of soil hardness on burrowing behaviour | |
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| Predation | |
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| The food resource of African mole-rats | |
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| The diet and its nutritional content | |
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| The distribution of geophytes | |
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| Foraging methods and optimality theory | |
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| Foraging in the wild | |
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| The food store | |
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| Ecological consequences of burrowing by mole-rats | |
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| Mole-rat geophyte co-adaptation | |
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| The risks of foraging for geophytes | |
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| Social organisation in African mole-rats | |
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| Solitary or social? | |
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| Colony size | |
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| Size distribution and colony biomass | |
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| Capture order within colonies | |
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| Reproductive division of labour | |
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| Overlap of generations and litters | |
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| Cooperative care of the young | |
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| Behavioural division of labour | |
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| Dominance and hierarchies in social mole-rats | |
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| Some concluding remarks | |
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| Life history patterns and reproductive biology | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Environmental influences on reproduction | |
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| Courtship, mating and ovulation | |
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| Gestation and parturition | |
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| Sex ratios | |
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| Pup development and growth | |
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| Dispersal | |
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| Longevity of breeding and lifetime reproductive success | |
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| Social suppression of reproduction in African mole-rats | |
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| An overview of reproductive suppression in mole-rats and other mammals | |
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| Suppression of reproduction in male naked and Damaraland mole-rats | |
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| Suppression of reproduction in female naked and Damaraland mole-rats | |
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| Reproductive suppression in other species of bathyergid mole-rats | |
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| Proximate cues and reproductive suppression in mole-rats: a reproductive dictatorship | |
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| Marmosets, mongooses and meerkats | |
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| The adaptive significance of reproductive suppression: theories of optimal reproductive skew | |
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| Some concluding comments | |
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| The genetic structure of mole-rat populations | |
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| Genetic relationships in subterranean mammals and cooperative breeders | |
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| Micro- and macro-geographic genetic structuring of naked mole-rat colonies | |
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| Intra-specific genetic studies of other bathyergids | |
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| The evolution of sociality in African mole-rats | |
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| What is a eusocial mammal? | |
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| The evolutionary routes to sociality | |
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| Theories of social evolution | |
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| Evolution of sociality in the Bathyergidae | |
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| Ecological constraints and social evolution in the Bathyergidae: comparative analysis | |
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| Eusociality: vertebrates versus invertebrates | |
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| References | |
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| Index | |