Date: February 17, 2017
Source: Okinawa Institute of
Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University
Social insects, such as ants,
bees and wasps, display an organizational complexity, called eusociality, where
individual members of a colony act more like parts of a whole rather than
independent organisms. In their colonies, each individual performs specific
tasks based on which caste they belong to: either the reproductive caste or the
worker caste. In many species, the reproductive role is determined in early
development -- by the time they are adults, queens and workers have set roles,
complete with distinct appearances and functions. Remarkably, although ants,
bees and wasps all evolved eusociality separately, all of their societies
display this caste distinction. This begs the question: in these different organisms,
have the same, or similar, genes evolved to differentiate social castes?
One way to answer this question
is to look at exceptions to the general rule. In many ant species, queen ants
are much larger than their worker counterparts. However, in some species, such
as the native Okinawan Diacamma species, there are few differences in
appearance between the worker caste and reproductive caste. These species are
called "queenless ants" as a result, though a social hierarchy that
includes both reproductive and worker castes exists within their colonies.
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