scholarly journals Editorial overview: Beyond eusocial insects: studying the other social insects to better understand social evolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. vi-viii
Author(s):  
Joël Meunier ◽  
Sandra Steiger
Keyword(s):  
Social Insects ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Eusocial Insects

Defense in Social Insects: Diversity, Division of Labor, and Evolution

2022 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 407-436
Author(s):  
Patrick Abbot
Keyword(s):  
Social Insects ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
Context Dependency ◽  
Active Defense ◽  
Eusocial Insects ◽  
Gene Regulatory ◽  
Emerging Themes ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Diverse Groups

All social insects defend their colony from predators, parasites, and pathogens. In Oster and Wilson's classic work, they posed one of the key paradoxes about defense in social insects: Given the universal necessity of defense, why then is there so much diversity in mechanisms? Ecological factors undoubtedly are important: Predation and usurpation have imposed strong selection on eusocial insects, and active defense by colonies is a ubiquitous feature of all social insects. The description of diverse insect groups with castes of sterile workers whose main duty is defense has broadened the purview of social evolution in insects, in particular with respect to caste and behavior. Defense is one of the central axes along which we can begin to organize and understand sociality in insects. With the establishment of social insect models such as the honey bee, new discoveries are emerging regarding the endocrine, neural, and gene regulatory mechanisms underlying defense in social insects. The mechanisms underlying morphological and behavioral defense traits may be shared across diverse groups, providing opportunities for identifying both conserved and novel mechanisms at work. Emerging themes highlight the context dependency of and interaction between factors that regulate defense in social insects.

On the Production of Religious Configurations

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 239-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustavo Benavides
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Sexual Differentiation ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Hominid Evolution ◽  
The Other

AbstractResearch on the emergence of the configuration known as “religion” requires tracing the articulation among biological, psychological and social processes. This research must take into account evolutionary approaches; first, in terms of hominid evolution, for it is only by taking into consideration work on symbolization, language development, the capacity to engage in metacognition and cooperation, the tendency to form hierarchies, engage in violence, sexual differentiation, and related topics, that one can hope to trace the emergence of certain relatively stable features of human behavior. But since symbolization and the other capacities mentioned above are exercised in specific social circumstances—which themselves could not have come into existence were it not for the exercise of those capacities—it is essential to consider social evolution, especially insofar as this evolution leads to the appearance of stratified societies and to the kind of labor that prevails in them.

Eusocial Insects as a Model for Understanding Altruism, Cooperation, and Levels of Selection

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heikki Helanterä
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Social Insect ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Family Structures ◽  
Major Transitions ◽  
Eusocial Insects ◽  
Insect Societies ◽  
Evolutionary Success

If the logic of natural selection is applied strictly at the level of individual production of offspring, sterile workers in insect societies are enigmatic. How can natural selection ever produce individuals that refrain from reproduction, and how are traits of such individuals that never produce offspring scrutinized and changed through natural selection? The solution to both questions is found in the family structures of insect societies. That is, the sterile helper individuals are evolutionary altruists that give up their own reproduction and instead are helping their kin reproduce and proliferate shared genes in the offspring of the fertile queen. Selection in such cases is not just a matter of individual’s direct reproduction, and instead of own offspring, the currency of the evolutionary success of sterile individuals is inclusive fitness. The concept of inclusive fitness and the process of kin selection are key to understanding the magnificent cooperation we see in insect societies, and reciprocally, insect societies are key case studies of inclusive fitness logic. In extreme cases, such as the highly advanced and sophisticated societies of ants, honeybees, and termites, the division of labor and interdependence of colony members is so complete, that it is justified to talk about a new level of evolutionary individuality. Such increases in the hierarchical complexity of life are called major transitions in evolution. We see adaptations of the colony, rather than individuals, in, e.g., their communication and group behaviors. The division of labor between morphologically differentiated queens and workers is analogous to germline-soma separation of a multicellular organism, justifying the term superorganism for the extreme cases of social lifestyle. Alongside these extreme cases, there is enormous diversity in the social lifestyles across social insect taxa, which provides a window into the balance of cooperation and conflict, and individual reproduction and helping others, in social evolution. Over the last decades, social insect research has been an area where the theoretical and empirical understanding have been developed hand in hand, together with examples of wonderful natural history, and has tremendously improved our understanding of evolution.

scholarly journals Stochastic spatial model for the division of labor in social insects

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (01) ◽  
pp. 45-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alesandro Arcuri ◽  
Nicolas Lanchier
Keyword(s):  
Communication Network ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Social Insects ◽  
Spatial Model ◽  
Interacting Particle Systems ◽  
Particle Systems ◽  
The Other ◽  
Interacting Particle ◽  
Vertex Set ◽  
The Cost

Motivated by the study of social insects, we introduce a stochastic model based on interacting particle systems in order to understand the effect of communication on the division of labor. Members of the colony are located on the vertex set of a graph representing a communication network. They are characterized by one of two possible tasks, which they update at a rate equal to the cost of the task they are performing by either defecting by switching to the other task or cooperating by anti-imitating a random neighbor in order to balance the amount of energy spent in each task. We prove that, at least when the probability of defection is small, the division of labor is poor when there is no communication, better when the communication network consists of a complete graph, but optimal on bipartite graphs with bipartite sets of equal size, even when both tasks have very different costs. This shows a non-monotonic relationship between the number of connections in the communication network and how well individuals organize themselves to accomplish both tasks equally.

scholarly journals Crystalline deposits reveal caste identity of late embryos and larvae of the ant Cardiocondyla obscurior

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Wallner ◽  
Eva Schultner ◽  
Jan Oettler
Keyword(s):  
Social Insects ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Reproductive Organs ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Crystalline Deposits ◽  
Reproductive Conflicts

Social insects are interesting models for the study of anticipatory developmental plasticity because of the striking differentiation into reproductive queens and functionally sterile workers. A few ant genera, including Cardiocondyla, represent the pinnacle of social evolution in the Hymenoptera, where workers have completely lost their reproductive organs, minimizing reproductive conflicts between queens and workers. Here we show that late embryos and larvae of queens of the ant C. obscurior can be identified by the appearance of urate deposits around the forming ovaries. The discovery of caste-specific urate patterns in C. obscurior and three additional Cardiocondyla species will facilitate future studies of developmental plasticity in ants.

scholarly journals The Infertility Trap: The Fertility Costs of Group-Living in Mammalian Social Evolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin I. M. Dunbar ◽  
Susanne Shultz
Keyword(s):  
Group Size ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Group Living ◽  
The Other ◽  
Risk Averse ◽  
Limit Group ◽  
Grouping Patterns ◽  
Environmental Demands

Mammal social groups vary considerably in size from single individuals to very large herds. In some taxa, these groups are extremely stable, with at least some individuals being members of the same group throughout their lives; in other taxa, groups are unstable, with membership changing by the day. We argue that this variability in grouping patterns reflects a tradeoff between group size as a solution to environmental demands and the costs created by stress-induced infertility (creating an infertility trap). These costs are so steep that, all else equal, they will limit group size in mammals to ∼15 individuals. A species will only be able to live in larger groups if it evolves strategies that mitigate these costs. We suggest that mammals have opted for one of two solutions. One option (fission-fusion herding) is low cost but high risk; the other (bonded social groups) is risk-averse, but costly in terms of cognitive requirements.

Forces of Production and Relations of Production

2018 ◽  
pp. 76-96
Author(s):  
David Laibman
Keyword(s):  
Social Evolution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Power ◽  
Historical Materialist ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Materialist Theory ◽  
The One ◽  
And Control ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

Marx and Engels based the movement for socialism and communism on a scientific analysis of social evolution rather than on ahistorical moral longings. This, however, requires replacement of vague evocative formulations by rigorous theoretical foundations. Two recent proposals for grounding the theory of the forces and relations of production—“intentional primacy” and “competitive primacy”—provide elements for this project but fail to drive it home. A proposed third approach, “social‒functional primacy,” focuses on the correspondence between advancing human power over nature, on the one hand, and the changing requirements for reproducible systems of exploitation—incentive, coercion, and control—on the other. A core evolutionary ladder of modes of production is identified as the basis for reconstructing the immense complexity of actual history, thus overcoming the dichotomy between “hard” and “soft” approaches to historical materialist theory.

Social Networks and Well-Being in Democracy in the Age of Digital Capitalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-109
Author(s):  
José Poças Rascão
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Electronic Market ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Digital Capitalism ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The One

The objective of this work is, on the one hand, to study the new competitive forms that correspond to the development of the different markets linked to electronic platforms and social networks on the internet and, on the other hand, to develop a proposal for social welfare for the positive and negative impacts produced by the development of these markets. In the first part, the main social and economic changes inherent to political and social evolution are addressed. The main logical trends of the market are presented about production and modalities of information appropriation, in particular the new forms of information asymmetries in the electronic market.

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