Journal ArticleDOI
Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects
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In this pathbreaking and far-reaching work George Oster and Edward Wilson provide the first fully developed theory of caste evolution among the social insects and construct a series of mathematical models to characterize the agents of natural selection that promote particular caste systems.Abstract:
In this pathbreaking and far-reaching work George Oster and Edward Wilson provide the first fully developed theory of caste evolution among the social insects. Furthermore, in studying the effects of natural selection in generally increasing the insects' ergonomic efficiency, they go beyond the concentration of previous researchers on the physiological mechanisms of the insects and turn our attention instead to the scale and efficiency of the insects' division of labor.Recognizing that the efficiency of the insect colony is based on a complex fitting of the division of labor to many simultaneous needs, including those imposed by the distribution of resources and enemies around the nest, Professors Oster and Wilson are able to construct a series of mathematical models to characterize the agents of natural selection that promote particular caste systems.The social insects play a key role in the subject of sociobiology because their social organization is so rigid and can be related to genetic evolution. Because of this important consideration, the authors' work has consequences not only for entomology but also for general evolutionary theory.read more
Citations
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Resource Limitation in Plants-An Economic Analogy
TL;DR: Revue bibliographique suggerant que, au moins pour la croissance vegetative les plantes fonctionnent conformement aux theoremes economiques: optimiser les profits and repartir de facon optimale les ressources.
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Regulation of division of labor in insect societies
TL;DR: A key feature of the division of labor in insect colonies is its plasticity, which enables it to continue to grow, develop, and ultimately produce a new generation of reproductive males and females despite changing colony conditions.
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Optimization Theory in Evolution
TL;DR: The basic structure of optimization arguments is outlined, and the possibility that some variation may be selectively neutral, and some structures maladaptive is discussed, as well as comment on criticisms made by Lewontin.
Book
Foundations of social evolution
TL;DR: Demography and Kin Selection1148Reproductive Value1349Sex Allocation: Marginal Value17210Sex Allocating: Kin Selection19111Sex Allocations: Reproductive Value21412 as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
The self-organizing exploratory pattern of the argentine ant
TL;DR: A minimal model shows how the exploratory pattern may be generated by the individual workers' simple trail-laying and -following behavior, illustrating how complex collective structures in insect colonies may be based on self-organization.