One giant leap: How insects achieved altruism and colonial life

BioScience

Volumn 58, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 17-25

  Wilson, Edward O ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Altruism; Evolution; Kin selection; Social insects; Sociobiology

Indexed keywords

HEXAPODA; HYMENOPTERA;

EID: 38749120915     PISSN: 00063568     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1641/B580106     Document Type: Review

References (80)

1. Abouheif E, Wray GA. 2002. Evolution of the gene network underlying wing polyphenism in ants. Science 297: 249-252.
2. Alcock J. 2005. Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach. 8th ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer.
3. Amdam GV, Csondes A, Fondrk MK, Page RE Jr. 2006. Complex social behaviour from maternal reproductive traits. Nature 439: 76-78.
4. Amdam GV, Nilsen K-A, Norberg K, Fondrk MK, Hartfelder K. 2007. Variation in endocrine signaling underlies variation in social life-history. American Naturalist 170: 37-46.
5. Beshers SN, Fewell JH. 2001. Models of division of labor in social insects. Annual Review of Entomology 46: 413-440.
6. Bonabeau E, Theraulaz G, Deneubourg J-L. 1996. Quantitative study of the fixed threshold model for the regulation of division of labour in insect societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 263: 1565-1569.
7. Bourke AFG, Franks NR. 1995. Social Evolution in Ants. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.
8. Choe JC, Crespi BJ, eds. 1997. The Evolution of Social Behavior in Insects and Arachnids. New York: Cambridge University Press.
9. Cole BJ, Wiernasz DC. 1999. The selective advantage of low relatedness. Science 285: 891-893.
10. Costa JT. 2006. The Other Insect Societies. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, Belknap Press.
11. Crespi BJ. 1992. Eusociality in Australian gall thrips. Nature 359: 724-726.
12. Crozier RH, Fjerdingstad EJ. 2001. Polyandry in social Hymenoptera - disunity in diversity? Annales Zoologici Fennici 38: 267-285.
13. Danforth BN. 2002. Evolution of sociality in a primitively eusocial lineage of bees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99: 286-290.
14. Denny AJ, Franks NR, Powell S, Edwards KJ. 2004. Exceptionally high levels of multiple mating in an army ant. Naturwissenschaften 91: 396-399.
15. Duffy JE, Morrison CL, Ríos R. 2000. Multiple origins of eusociality among sponge-dwelling shrimps (Synalpheus). Evolution 54: 503-516.
16. Evans HE. 1958. The evolution of social life in wasps. Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of Entomology 2: 449-457.
17. Field J. 2005. The evolution of progressive provisioning. Behavioral Ecology 16: 770-778.
18. Field J, Brace S. 2004. Pre-social benefits of extended parental care. Nature 427: 650-652.
19. Fielde A. 1903. Artificial mixed nests of ants. Biological Bulletin 5: 320-325.
20. Fittkau EJ, Klinge H. 1973. On biomass and trophic structure of the central Amazonian rain forest ecosystem. Biotropica 5: 2-14.
21. Foster KR, Wenseleers T, Ratnieks FLW. 2006a. Kin selection is the key to altruism. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 21: 57-60.
22. Foster KR, Wenseleers T, Ratnieks FLW, Queller DC. 2006b. There is nothing wrong with inclusive fitness. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 21: 599-600.
23. Frank SA. 1998. Foundations of Social Evolution. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.
24. Goodnight CJ. 2000. Heritability at the ecosystem level. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97: 9365-9366.
25. Grafen A. 2006. Optimization of inclusive fitness. Journal of Theoretical Biology 238: 541-563.
26. Greenberg L. 1979. Genetic component of bee odor in kin recognition. Science 206: 1095-1097.
27. Haldane JBS. 1955. Population genetics. New Biology 18: 34-51.
28. Hamilton WD. 1964. The genetical evolution of social behaviour, I, II. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7: 1-52.
29. Hines HM, Hunt JH, O'Connor TK, Gillespie JJ, Cameron SA. 2007. Multigene phylogeny reveals eusociality evolved twice in vespid wasps. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 3295-3299.
30. Hölldobler B, Wilson EO. 1990. The Ants. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, Belknap Press.
31. _. 2008. The Superorganism. New York: W. W. Norton. Forthcoming.
32. Hughes WOH, Boomsma JJ. 2004. Genetic diversity and disease resistance in leaf-cutting ant societies. Evolution 58: 1251-1260.
33. Hunt JH. 2007. The Evolution of Social Wasps. New York: Oxford University Press.
34. Hunt JH, Amdam GV. 2005. Bivoltinism as an antecedent to eusociality in the paper wasp genus Polistes. Science 308: 264-267.
35. Jeanson R, Kukuk PF, Fewell JH. 2005. Emergence of division of labour in halictine bees: Contributions of social interactions and behavioural variance. Animal Behaviour 70: 1183-1193.
36. Jones JC, Myerscough MR, Graham S, Oldroyd BP. 2004. Honey bee nest thermoregulation: Diversity promotes stability. Science 305: 402-404.
37. Kent DS, Simpson JA. 1992. Eusociality in the beetle Austroplatypus incompertus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae). Naturwissenschaften 79: 86-87.
38. Kerr B, Neuhauser C, Bohannan BJM, Dean AM. 2006. Local migration promotes competitive restraint in a host-pathogen 'tragedy of the commons.' Nature 442: 75-79.
39. Krieger MJB, Ross KG. 2002. Identification of a major gene regulating complex social behavior. Science 295: 328-332.
40. Kukuk PF, Bitney C, Forbes SH. 2005. Maintaining low intragroup relatedness: Evolutionary stability of nonkin social groups. Animal Behaviour 70: 1305-1311.
41. Landi M, Queller DC, Turillazzi S, Strassmann JE. 2003. Low relatedness and frequent queen turnover in the stenogastrine wasp Eustenogaster fraterna favor the life insurance over the haplodiploid hypothesis for the origin of eusociality. Insectes Sociaux 50: 262-267.
42. Lehmann L, Keller L, West S, Roze D. 2007. Group selection and kin selection: Two concepts but one process. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 6736-6739.
43. Levins R. 1966. The strategy of model building in population biology. American Scientist 54: 421-431.
44. Michener CD. 1958. The evolution of social behavior in bees. Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of Entomology 2: 441-447.
45. _. 1974. The Social Behavior of the Bees: A Comparative Study. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, Belknap Press.
46. Murakami T, Higashi S, Windsor D. 2000. Mating frequency, colony size, polyethism and sex ratio in fungus-growing ants (Attini). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 48: 276-284.
47. Panelli D, Turillazzi S, Boomsma JJ. 2004. Genetic relationships between females, males, and older brood in the tropical hover wasp Parischnogaster mellyi (Saussure). Insect Social Life 5: 35-40.
48. Parker SP, ed. 1982. Synopsis and Classification of Living Organisms, vol. 2. New York: McGraw-Hill.
49. Pirk CWW, Neumann P, Moritz RFA, Pamilo P. 2001. Intranest relatedness and nestmate recognition in the meadow ant Formica pratensis (R.). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 49: 366-374.
50. Ratnieks FLW, Foster KR, Wenseleers T. 2006. Conflict resolution in insect societies. Annual Review of Entomology 51: 581-608.
51. Rheindt FE, Strehl CP, Gadau J. 2005. A genetic component in the determination of worker polymorphism in the Florida harvester ant Pogonomyrmex badius. Insectes Sociaux 52: 163-168.
52. Richards MH, von Wettberg EJ, Rutgers AC. 2003. A novel social polymorphism in a primitively eusocial bee. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100: 7175-7180.
53. Robinson GE, Page RE Jr. 1989. Genetic basis for division of labor in an insect society. Pages 61-80 in Breed MD, Page RE Jr, eds. The Genetics of Social Evolution. Boulder (CO): Westview Press.
54. Ross KG, Keller L. 1998. Genetic control of social organization in an ant. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95: 14232-14237.
55. Rosset H, Keller L, Chapuisat M. 2005. Experimental manipulation of colony genetic diversity had no effect on short-term task efficiency in the Argentine ant Linepithema humile. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 58: 87-98.
56. Sakagami SF. 1960. Ethological peculiarities of the primitive social bees, Allodape Lepeltier and allied genera. Insectes Sociaux 7: 231-249.
57. Sakagami SF, Maeta Y. 1987. Sociality, induced and/or natural, in the basically solitary small carpenter bees (Ceratina). Pages 1-16 in Itô Y, Brown JL, Kikkawa J, eds. Animal Societies: Theories and Facts. Tokyo: Japan Scientific Societies Press.
58. Schmid-Hempel P. 1998. Parasites in Social Insects. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.
59. Schwander T, Rosset H, Chapuisat M. 2005. Division of labour and worker size polymorphism in ant colonies: The impact of social and genetic factors. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 59: 215-221.
60. Sherman PW, Seeley TD, Reeve HK. 1988. Parasites, pathogens, and polyandry in social Hymenoptera. American Naturalist 131: 602-610.
61. Stern DL, Foster WA. 1996. The evolution of soldiers in aphids. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 71: 27-79.
62. Stow A, Briscoe D, Gillings M, Holley M, Smith S, Leys R, Silberbauer T, Turnbull C, Beattie A. 2007. Antimicrobial defences increase with sociality in bees. Biology Letters 3: 422-424.
63. Strassmann JE. 1996. Selective altruism towards closer over more distant relatives in colonies of the primitively eusocial wasp, Polistes. Pages 190-201 in Turillazzi S, West-Eberhard MJ, eds. Natural History and Evolution of Paper-Wasps. New York: Oxford University Press.
64. Thomas ML, Parry LJ, Allan RA, Elgar MA. 1999. Geographic affinity, cuticular hydrocarbons and colony recognition in the Australian meat ant Iridomyrmex purpureus. Naturwissenschaften 86: 87-92.
65. Traniello JFA, Rosengaus RB, Savoie K. 2002. The development of immunity in a social insect: Evidence for the group facilitation of disease resistance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99: 6838-6842.
66. Traulsen A, Nowak MA. 2006. Evolution of cooperation by multilevel selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103: 10952-10955.
67. Trivers RL, Hare H. 1976. Haplodiploidy and the evolution of the social insects. Science 191: 249-263.
68. Tschinkel WR. 2006. The Fire Ants. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, Belknap Press.
69. Wcislo WT. 1997. Social interactions and behavioral context in a largely solitary bee, Lasioglossum (Dialictus) figueresi (Hymenoptera, Halictidae). Insectes Sociaux 44: 199-208.
70. Wenseleers T, Ratnieks FLW. 2006. Comparative analysis of worker reproduction and policing in eusocial Hymenoptera supports relatedness theory. American Naturalist 168: E163-E179.
71. Werfel J, Bar-Yam Y. 2004. The evolution of reproductive constraint through social communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101: 11019-11024.
72. West SA, Griffin AS, Gardner A. 2006a. Social semantics: Altruism, cooperation, mutualism, strong reciprocity and group selection. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 20: 415-432.
73. West SA, Griffin AS, Gardner A, Diggle SP. 2006b. Social evolution theory for microorganisms. Nature Reviews Microbiology 4: 597-607.
74. Wheeler WM. 1928. The Social Insects: Their Origin and Evolution. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
75. _. 1933. Colony-founding among Ants, with an Account of Some Primitive Australian Species. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
76. Wilson DS, Wilson EO. 2007. Rethinking the theoretical foundation of sociobiology. Quarterly Review of Biology 82: 327-348.
77. Wilson EO. 1971. The Insect Societies. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, Belknap Press.
78. _. 1975. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, Belknap Press.
79. _. 1990. Success and Dominance in Ecosystems: The Case of the Social Insects. Oldendorf/Luhe (Germany): Ecology Institute.
80. Wilson EO, Hölldobler B. 2005. Eusociality: Origin and consequence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102: 13367-13371.