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This book is concerned with two problems: how eusociality, in which
one individual forgoes reproduction to enhance the reproduction of
a nestmate, could evolve under natural selection, and why it is
found only in some insects-termites, ants and some bees and wasps.
Although eusociality is apparently confined to insects, it has
evolved a number of times in a single order of insects, the
Hymenoptera. W. Hamilton's hypothesis, that the unusual
haplodiploid mechanism of sex determination in the Hymenoptera
singled this order out, still seems to have great explanatory power
in the study of social ants. We believe that the direction, indeed
confinement, of social altruism to close kin is the mainspring of
social life in an ant colony, and the alternative explanatory
schemes of, for example, parental manipu lation, should rightly be
seen to operate within a system based on the selective support of
kin. To control the flow of resources within their colony all its
members resort to manipulations of their nestmates: parental
manipulation of offspring is only one facet of a complex web of
manipul ation, exploitation and competition for resources within
the colony. The political intrigues extend outside the bounds of
the colony, to insects and plants which have mutualistic relations
with ants. In eusociality some individuals (sterile workers) do not
pass their genes to a new generation directly. Instead, they tend
the offspring of a close relation (in the simplest case their
mother).
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