22 April 2004
Social insects pull together
An important shift in evolution occurred when solitary organisms got together to form societies with reproductive division of labour. A number of theories have been put forward to explain how such societies might evolve by natural selection, but this is a field where experimental data are hard to come by. Now, using a social bee (the Australian allodapine bee) as a model, Langer et al. have manipulated the key ecological genetic and social factors predicted to influence the evolution of 'reproductive skew', which is the sharing of reproduction in groups of multiple breeders. The results support the 'tug-of-war' model, where both dominant and subordinate individuals influence the division of reproduction via selfish competition, but face a trade-off between maximizing group productivity and maximizing their own share of direct reproduction. The data do not support an alternative explanation, that in a 'social contract', dominant individuals are favoured to concede some reproduction to subordinates to retain their help.
Tug-of-war over reproduction in a social bee
PHILIPP LANGER, KATJA HOGENDOORN & LAURENT KELLER
Nature 428, 844–847 (2004); doi:10.1038/nature02431
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