Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Are behavioral classifications blinders to studying natural variation?
- 2 Life beneath silk walls: a review of the primitively social Embiidina
- 3 Postovulation parental investment and parental care in cockroaches
- 4 The spectrum of eusociality in termites
- 5 Maternal care in the Hemiptera: ancestry, alternatives, and current adaptive value
- 6 Evolution of paternal care in the giant water bugs (Heteroptera: Belostomatidae)
- 7 The evolution of sociality in aphids: a clone's-eye view
- 8 Ecology and evolution of social behavior among Australian gall thrips and their allies
- 9 Interactions among males, females and offspring in bark and ambrosia beetles: the significance of living in tunnels for the evolution of social behavior
- 10 Biparental care and social evolution in burying beetles: lessons from the larder
- 11 Subsocial behavior in Scarabaeinae beetles
- 12 The evolution of social behavior in Passalidae (Coleoptera)
- 13 The evolution of social behavior in the augochlorine sweat bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) based on a phylogenetic analysis of the genera
- 14 Demography and sociality in halictine bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae)
- 15 Behavioral environments of sweat bees (Halictinae) in relation to variability in social organization
- 16 Intrinsic and extrinsic factors associated with social evolution in allodapine bees
- 17 Cooperative breeding in wasps and vertebrates: the role of ecological constraints
- 18 Morphologically ‘primitive’ ants: comparative review of social characters, and the importance of queen–worker dimorphism
- 19 Social conflict and cooperation among founding queens in ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
- 20 Social evolution in the Lepidoptera: ecological context and communication in larval societies
- 21 Sociality and kin selection in Acari
- 22 Colonial web-building spiders: balancing the costs and benefits of group-living
- 23 Causes and consequences of cooperation and permanent-sociality in spiders
- 24 Explanation and evolution of social systems
- Organism index
- Subject index
24 - Explanation and evolution of social systems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Are behavioral classifications blinders to studying natural variation?
- 2 Life beneath silk walls: a review of the primitively social Embiidina
- 3 Postovulation parental investment and parental care in cockroaches
- 4 The spectrum of eusociality in termites
- 5 Maternal care in the Hemiptera: ancestry, alternatives, and current adaptive value
- 6 Evolution of paternal care in the giant water bugs (Heteroptera: Belostomatidae)
- 7 The evolution of sociality in aphids: a clone's-eye view
- 8 Ecology and evolution of social behavior among Australian gall thrips and their allies
- 9 Interactions among males, females and offspring in bark and ambrosia beetles: the significance of living in tunnels for the evolution of social behavior
- 10 Biparental care and social evolution in burying beetles: lessons from the larder
- 11 Subsocial behavior in Scarabaeinae beetles
- 12 The evolution of social behavior in Passalidae (Coleoptera)
- 13 The evolution of social behavior in the augochlorine sweat bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) based on a phylogenetic analysis of the genera
- 14 Demography and sociality in halictine bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae)
- 15 Behavioral environments of sweat bees (Halictinae) in relation to variability in social organization
- 16 Intrinsic and extrinsic factors associated with social evolution in allodapine bees
- 17 Cooperative breeding in wasps and vertebrates: the role of ecological constraints
- 18 Morphologically ‘primitive’ ants: comparative review of social characters, and the importance of queen–worker dimorphism
- 19 Social conflict and cooperation among founding queens in ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
- 20 Social evolution in the Lepidoptera: ecological context and communication in larval societies
- 21 Sociality and kin selection in Acari
- 22 Colonial web-building spiders: balancing the costs and benefits of group-living
- 23 Causes and consequences of cooperation and permanent-sociality in spiders
- 24 Explanation and evolution of social systems
- Organism index
- Subject index
Summary
ABSTRACT
We review the causes of the evolution of social systems and the methods used in their analysis. First, we discuss the roles of genetics, phenotypic traits, ecology (basic necessary resources and natural enemies) and demography in the origin and evolution of sociality, and synthesize the effects of these conditions in a comparative assessment of the predictions of optimal skew models. The models provide a useful framework to explaining and predicting social systems, but would benefit from expansion in the range of their assumptions and more explicit connection to ecological and demographic selective pressures. Second, we review the purposes and usefulness of alternative social system lexicons. We conclude that the trade–off between universality and taxon–specific precision of terms can usefully be addressed by explanation of social terms for each comparative test coupled with striving for recognition of convergence across the broadest possible taxonomic range. Finally, we provide an overview of current adaptationist methods used for analyzing social systems, focussing on approaches that utilize phylogenetic information. Integration of comparative with behavioral–ecological methods, especially experimentation, promises to lead to the next series of insights and critical data for tests of theory.
INTRODUCTION
This volume has had three main objectives. First, we have tried to bring together the widest possible diversity of social insects and arachnids, to elucidate necessary and sufficient conditions for the origin and maintenance of different social systems. In this chapter, we first review the evidence for associations between social systems and genetic, phenotypic, ecological and demographic variables.
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- Information
- The Evolution of Social Behaviour in Insects and Arachnids , pp. 499 - 524Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997
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