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Conflicts of Interest Within Colonies

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Encyclopedia of Social Insects

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The Scope for Conflict in Insect Societies

The societies of ants, bees, wasps, and termites are frequently viewed as one of the pinnacles of social evolution. Indeed, their eusocial organization implies that some individuals specialize in reproduction and others in altruistic helping. In many species, the level of coordination and division of labor within the worker caste reaches such extreme levels that their societies are frequently described as superorganisms. Yet, underneath the surface, research has shown that conflicts are rife, especially when it concerns reproduction. The scope for such conflicts can be understood based on inclusive fitness theory. While this theory predicted that cooperation and altruism can evolve when aimed at genetic relatives, the flipside of the theory is that individuals may also be selected to harm or compete with less related individuals. The genetic asymmetries that occur in insect societies provide much scope for such conflicts, both among the queen...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Tom Wenseleers, Sarah Princen, Ricardo Caliari Oliveira & Cintia Akemi Oi

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  1. Tom Wenseleers
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  2. Sarah Princen
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Correspondence to Tom Wenseleers .

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  1. Caura Village, Trinidad & Tobago

    Christopher K. Starr

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Wenseleers, T., Princen, S., Caliari Oliveira, R., Oi, C.A. (2021). Conflicts of Interest Within Colonies. In: Starr, C.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Social Insects. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28102-1_28

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