Altruism in insect societies and beyond: voluntary or enforced?

Ratnieks, Francis L. W.; Wenseleers, Tom

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2007.09.013

Cited by 173 publications

(211 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…This finding holds for both parental and offspring control of the trait, although the selective pressure on altruism is halved under offspring control (compare equations (2.4) and (2.5)). The fact that these two types of control of the trait lead to different selection pressure on altruism also suggest that there can be genetic conflicts over who is in control of worker production within insect colonies, a topic that remains an empirically open question (Ratnieks & Wenseleers 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Population viscosity can promote the evolution of altruistic sterile helpers and eusociality

2008

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Because it increases relatedness between interacting individuals, population viscosity has been proposed to favour the evolution of altruistic helping. However, because it increases local competition between relatives, population viscosity may also act as a brake for the evolution of helping behaviours. In simple models, the kin selected fecundity benefits of helping are exactly cancelled out by the cost of increased competition between relatives when helping occurs after dispersal. This result has lead to the widespread view, especially among people working with social organisms, that special conditions are required for the evolution of altruism. Here, we re-examine this result by constructing a simple population genetic model where we analyse whether the evolution of a sterile worker caste (i.e. an extreme case of altruism) can be selected for by limited dispersal. We show that a sterile worker caste can be selected for even under the simplest life-cycle assumptions. This has relevant consequences for our understanding of the evolution of altruism in social organisms, as many social insects are characterized by limited dispersal and significant genetic population structure.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Population viscosity can promote the evolution of altruistic sterile helpers and eusociality

2008

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“…Schradin & Lamprecht 2000). Policing in social insects is a special case since the destruction of eggs for the benefit of the remainder of the hive benefits the punishers indirectly through kin benefits (Ratnieks & Wenseleers 2008), a point that will be expanded upon in §4. In one experiment, male cleaner fish aggressed against female partners for 'cheating' by taking the preferred food from a plastic plate, resulting in the immediate removal of the common food source (Raihani et al 2010).…”

Section: Gros-louis 2004)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Punishment and spite, the dark side of cooperation

Jensen

2010

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

170

167

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Causing harm to others would hardly seem to be relevant to cooperation, other than as a barrier to it. However, because selfish individuals will exploit cooperators, functional punishment is an effective mechanism for enforcing cooperation by deterring free-riding. Although functional punishment can shape the social behaviour of others by targeting non-cooperative behaviour, it can also intimidate others into doing almost anything. Second-party functional punishment is a self-serving behaviour at the disposal of dominant individuals who can coerce others into behaving cooperatively, but it need not do so. Third-party and altruistic functional punishment are less likely to be selfishly motivated and would seem more likely to maintain norms of cooperation in large groups. These forms of functional punishment may be an essential part of non-kin cooperation on a scale exhibited only by humans. While punitive sentiments might be the psychological force behind punitive behaviours, spiteful motives might also play an important role. Furthermore, functionally spiteful acts might not be maladaptive; reckoning gains relative to others rather than in absolute terms can lead to hyper-competitiveness, which might also be an important part of human cooperation, rather than just an ugly by-product.

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“…First and foremost, the book deals almost exclusively with the cooperative side of insect societies-the expression of reproductive conflict, and how such conflicts can be understood on the basis of kin selection theory, gets short shrift and a brief mention in only one chapter on Ponerine ants. The vast amount of work on sex-ratio conflict (Bourke and Franks 1995) gets one page; conflicts associated with queen-worker caste determination (Ratnieks et al 2006, Ratnieks andWenseleers 2008) are not mentioned at all. There is also no discussion on the suppression of within-colony conflicts, even though this is a key requirement for social insect colonies to acquire the properties of unitary superorganisms, in the same way that individuals can be considered units only if conflicts within the genome are effectively suppressed (Ratnieks et al 2006, Gardner A andGrafen 2009).…”

Section: Tom Wenseleersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is also no discussion on the suppression of within-colony conflicts, even though this is a key requirement for social insect colonies to acquire the properties of unitary superorganisms, in the same way that individuals can be considered units only if conflicts within the genome are effectively suppressed (Ratnieks et al 2006, Gardner A andGrafen 2009). The fact that workers frequently force each other into sterility by eating or "policing" each other's eggs (Ratnieks and Wenseleers 2008)-a classic example of a conflict-resolution mechanism-is mentioned only in passing in the chapter on communication, where it seems somewhat lost. Also relating to the treatment of evolutionary issues, I felt it was a shame that the chapter on ant phylogeny merely gives a dry account of the relationships among various ant subfamilies.…”

Section: Tom Wenseleersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Superorganism Revisited

Wenseleers¹

2009

BioScience

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Altruism in insect societies and beyond: voluntary or enforced?

Cited by 173 publications

References 72 publications

Population viscosity can promote the evolution of altruistic sterile helpers and eusociality

Population viscosity can promote the evolution of altruistic sterile helpers and eusociality

Punishment and spite, the dark side of cooperation

The Superorganism Revisited

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