Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, UMR 7205 Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité ISYEB - UMR 7205 - MNHN CNRS UPMC EPHE, Sorbonne Universités, 57 rue Cuvier, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France.
CNRS, UMR 5554 Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution (Université de Montpellier), Place Eugène Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier, France.
Syst Biol. 2018 Sep 1;67(5):873-887. doi: 10.1093/sysbio/syy014.
Eusociality, Darwin's special difficulty, has been widely investigated but remains a topic of great debate in organismal biology. Eusocial species challenge existing theories, and the impact of highly integrated societies on diversification dynamics is controversial with opposing assertions and hypotheses in the literature. Here, using phylogenetic approaches in termites-the first group that has evolved eusociality-we assessed the fundamental prediction that eusocial lineages have higher diversification rates than non-eusocial clades. We found multiple lines of evidence that eusociality provided higher diversification as compared to non-eusociality. This is particularly exacerbated for eusocial species with "true" workers as compared to species with "false" workers. Because most species with "true" workers have an entirely prokaryotic microbiota, the latter feature is also related to higher diversification rates, but it should be investigated further, notably in relation to angiosperm diversification. Overall, this study suggests that societies with "true" workers are not only more successful at ecological timescales but also over millions of years, which further implies that both organism- and species-level traits act on species selection.
社会性，达尔文的特殊难题，已经得到了广泛的研究，但在机体生物学中仍然是一个极具争议的话题。社会性物种挑战了现有理论，高度整合的社会对多样化动态的影响是有争议的，文献中存在相互矛盾的观点和假设。在这里，我们使用白蚁中的系统发育方法——第一个进化出社会性的群体——来评估一个基本预测，即社会性谱系的多样化速度高于非社会性谱系。我们发现了多种证据表明，与非社会性相比，社会性提供了更高的多样化。对于具有“真正”工蚁的社会性物种而言，这种情况更为严重，而不是具有“假”工蚁的物种。因为大多数具有“真正”工蚁的物种都有完全的原核微生物群，后者的特征也与更高的多样化速度有关，但还需要进一步研究，特别是与被子植物的多样化有关。总的来说，这项研究表明，具有“真正”工蚁的社会不仅在生态时间尺度上更成功，而且在数百万年的时间里也是如此，这进一步意味着个体和物种水平的特征都会影响物种选择。
