Navigation Links
Insects' 'giant leap' reconstructed by founder of sociobiology

The January 2008 issue of BioScience includes an article by biologist Edward O. Wilson that argues for a new perspective on the evolution of advanced social organization in some ants, bees, and wasps (Hymenoptera).

Wilsons article surveys recent evidence that the high level of social organization called eusociality, found in some Hymenoptera (and rarely in other species), is a result of natural selection on nascent colonies of species possessing features that predispose them to colonial life. Wilson concludes that these features, principally progressive provisioning of larvae and behavioral flexibility that leads to division of labor, allow some species to evolve colonies that are maintained and defended because of their proximity to food sources.


Wilsons survey in BioScience, which examines the findings of a number of researchers, points out aspects of the occurrence of eusociality that the standard explanation has difficulty accounting for. Eusociality has evolved only a few times, and not all of them were in haplodiploid species. Furthermore, the great majority of haplodiploid species are not eusocial. Wilson holds that selection acting on traits that emerge at a group level provides a more complete explanation for eusocialitys rare instances than kin selection. Kin selection is, he writes, not wrong but incomplete.

The view Wilson advocates is controversial because theoretical biologists have thus far been unable to create mathematical models that demonstrate the strong colony-level selection that Wilson postulates. Any theory about eusociality has to explain why selection acting on individuals does not lead some to undermine the colony by reproducing themselves. According to some of Wilsons critics, the theory he now espouses relies on unacknowledged individual-level selection rather than group selection.


Contact: Jennifer Williams
American Institute of Biological Sciences

Related biology news :

1. Tropical insects go the distance to inform rainforest conservation
2. Handbook of small grain insects available now
3. Giant panda can survive
4. DNA replication behavior in complex organisms may foreshadow leaps in genomic discoveries
Post Your Comments:
Breaking Biology News(10 mins):
Breaking Biology Technology: