Social behavior occurs in some of the smallest animals as well as
some the largest, and the transition from solitary life to
sociality is an unsolved evolutionary mystery. In The Evolution of
Social Wasps, James H. Hunt examines social behavior in a single
lineage of insects, wasps of the family Vespidae. He presents
empirical knowledge of social wasps from two approaches, one that
focuses on phylogeny and life history and one that focuses on
individual ontogeny, colony development, and population dynamics.
He also provides an extensive summary of the existing literature
while demonstrating how it can be clouded by theory. Hunt's fresh
approach to the conflicting literature on sociality highlights how
oft repeated models can become fixed in the thinking of the
scientific community. Instead, Hunt presents a mechanistic scenario
for the evolution of sociality in wasps that changes our
perspective on kin selection, the paradigm that has dominated
thinking about social evolution since the 1970s. This innovative
new model integrates life history, nutrition, fitness and ecology
in which social insect biologists will find a rich storehouse of
ideas and information, and behavioral ecologists will find a
bracing challenge to long accepted models. Engagingly written,
bold, and provocative, The Evolution of Social Wasps marks a
milestone in our understanding of one of lifes major evolutionary
transitions - the origin of social behavior.
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