Department of Agro-Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, University of the Ryukyus, Nishihara, Okinawa 903-0213, Japan
Department of Agro-Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, University of the Ryukyus, Nishihara, Okinawa 903-0213, Japan.
Proc Biol Sci. 2018 Mar 28;285(1875). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2017.2548.
Altruism is a paradox in Darwinian evolution. Policing is an important mechanism of the evolution and maintenance of altruism. A recently developed dynamic game model incorporating colony demography and inclusive fitness predicts that, in hymenopteran social insects, policing behaviour enforcing reproductive altruism in group members depends strongly on the colony growth stage, with strong policing as the colony develops and a relaxation of policing during the reproductive phase. Here, we report clear evidence supporting this prediction. In the ant sp., reproduction by workers was suppressed by worker policing when the colony was small, whereas in large, mature colonies worker policing was relaxed and worker-produced males emerged. Conditional expression of traits can provide strong empirical evidence for natural selection theory if the expression pattern is precisely predicted by the theory, and our results illustrate the importance of intracolony population dynamics in the evolution of social systems.
利他主义是达尔文进化论中的一个悖论。监管是进化和维持利他主义的重要机制。最近开发的一个包含群体动态和适合度的动态博弈模型预测，在膜翅目社会性昆虫中，强制执行群体成员生殖利他行为的监管行为强烈依赖于群体的发展阶段，随着群体的发展而加强监管，而在生殖阶段则放松监管。在这里，我们报告了明确支持这一预测的证据。在蚂蚁种中，当群体较小时，工蚁通过工蚁监管来抑制生殖，而在大而成熟的群体中，工蚁监管放松，工蚁产生的雄性出现。如果特征的表达模式被理论精确预测，那么条件表达特征可以为自然选择理论提供强有力的经验证据，我们的结果说明了群体内种群动态在社会系统进化中的重要性。
