Social Plasticity: Ecology, Genetics, and the Structure of Ant Societies

Abstract

*[The close kinship between helping workers & their sexual sisters in haplodiploid Hymenoptera is thought to have favored the evolution of sterile worker castes & altruistic behavior in ants, bees, and wasps. Much research has therefore concentrated on elucidating the genetic structure of Hymenopteran societies. However, variation in kinship appears to be surprisingly unimportant in shaping some of the details of the social structure of insect societies. Instead, major features of the colony phenotype, such as worker number, queen number, reproductive skew, worker policing, & the pattern of allocation of resources towards colony growth or reproduction are more strongly affected by variation in ecological parameters, such as the availability of suitable nest sites for colony founding, resource abundance, & the occurrence of social parasites.]