selfish strategy of social insect workers that promotes social cohesion

Social insect colonies are in many ways analogous to organisms, because kin-selected workers act selflessly and cohesively to promote mote the fitness of a few reproductive members. But workers can evolve selfish strategies which create reproductive conflict, reducing the functional integrity of col...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Nature (London) Vol. 365; no. 6447; pp. 639 - 641
Main Authors:	Queller, D.C, Strassmann, J.E, Solis, C.R, Hughes, C.R, DeLoach, D.M
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	London Nature Publishing Group 14-10-1993
Subjects:	Animal behavior Cohesion Hymenoptera Insects Parachartergus colobopterus Polybia polybia emaciata Polybia occidentalis protopolybia exigua reproduction sex ratio social insects Vespidae
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Summary:	Social insect colonies are in many ways analogous to organisms, because kin-selected workers act selflessly and cohesively to promote mote the fitness of a few reproductive members. But workers can evolve selfish strategies which create reproductive conflict, reducing the functional integrity of colonies. For example, they can lay unfertilized (male) eggs, compete directly with the queen to lay fertilized (female) eggs, suppress the reproduction of other workers, choose among several queens and generally favour closer over more distant kin. Conflicts over the sex ratio may be especially pervasive, even in highly eusocial insects. The unusually high relatedness (r = 3/4) of female hymenopteran workers to their full sisters means that workers should prefer more female-biased sex ratios than do queens. The worker preference for females should be exerted most strongly on colonies where they are most likely to be full sisters, leaving male production to colonies where this advantage least applies; this prediction is supported by studies in ants and bees. Here we show that when colonies have multiple queens born in the same nest, the selfish worker sex-ratio strategy has a paradoxical side-effect which strongly promotes social cohesion. This strategy accounts for the peculiar colony cycle of epiponine wasps, and may be responsible for the maintenance of eusociality in this group.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23
ISSN:	0028-0836 1476-4687
DOI:	10.1038/365639a0