Behaviour and Social Evolution of Wasps: The Communal Aggregation Hypothesis

ISBN-13: 9780198540465 / Angielski / Miękka / 1993 / 168 str.

Yoshiaki Ito

Opis

In this book, Ito presents data on tropical wasps which suggest that kin-selection has been overemphasized as an evolutionary explanation of sociality. He concentrates on the Vespidae (paper wasps and hornets), a group much discussed by evolutionary biologists because it exhibits all stages of social evolution: subsociality, primitive eusociality, and advanced eusociality. The author reports field observations by himself and others in Central America, Asia, and Australia, showing that multiple egg-layers in a nest are not uncommon. Because coexistence of many 'queens' leads to lower relatedness among colony members than in single-queen colonies, he suggests that kin-selection may not be the most powerful force determining observed social patterns. Instead, subsocial wasps may first have aggregated for defense purposes in habitats with a high risk of predation, with mutualistic associations among many queens. Through parental manipulation and then kin selection, differentiation into within-generation castes may have followed. Of interest to all students of ecology, evolution, and behavior, this book beautifully demonstrates the author's ability to combine wide-ranging data with thoughtful questions.
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Recenzje

This book beautifully illustrates the ability to combine wide-ranging data with thoughtful questions. It offers a basis for further research in this respect, but is also of general interest to all students of ecology, evolution and behaviour.

Spis treści

Introduction; Systematics and sociality of wasps; Theories on the evolution of eusociality; Problems with the kin-selection hypothesis; Comparison of dominance relations and proportion of multi-female nests in the Polistinae; Ropalidia fasciata in Okinawa, Japan; a species with flexible social relations; Social relations in wasp colonies in the wet tropics; Polistine wasps in Panama; Role of miltuple comb construction and perennial nature of nests: Polistine wasps in Australia; Multi-queen societies: swarm-founding wasps in the tropics; Social lives of the other social wasps; Origin of pleometrosis: altruism or mutualism?; Manipulation of progeny by mother groups: an hypothesis for the evolution of multi-queen societies; Kin-selection and multi-queen social systems; Conclusion; References; Index.