Quote:
Originally Posted by Guybrush
Another source of conflict seem to be in ant species where the shapes (morphology) of ants are more similar. The typical queen is ideally suited for egg-laying while a worker is not, so this would reinforce how a worker should rather spread her own genes by using the queen as her sexual proxy. However, if queens and workers are physically more similar and more alike in capabilities, that seems to increase the level of violent conflict.
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Yes, this actually is part of the logic behind Wilson's suggestion that some types of colonies could qualify as superorganisms.
There was a documentary I saw years ago by national geographic which highlighted the ways in which colonies exist along a certain sort of spectrum of eusociality. It was the same documentary I mentioned earlier which showed one of the workers in a colony start to try to go into the process of laying eggs and she was physically restrained and prevented from doing so by her sisters.
This was in a long legged ant colony, where the difference in morphology between the queen and the workers was not as drastically pronounced.
The workers weren't infertile, they just tended not to reproduce. In other colonies, however, the workers are born sterile and cannot reproduce. Their only reproductive outlet is through the queen which in essence means they are intrinsically tied to the well being of the colony.
That is how it is suggested that traits can be selected for on the basis of making the colony more efficient. To my mind it's not much different than traits being selected for that make your body more equipped to survive to reproduction.
If the genes of the colony flow strictly through the queen, then it seems like conceptualizing the colony as a sort of "body" with the queen as its reproductive organ is not all that different from the picture Dawkins paints of how genes eventually started coding to build robots (organisms) to carry the genes around and propagate them.
Maybe there is something I'm missing but I don't quite see the conflict there. Since it's genes that are being selected for, not individuals, why must we insist the individuals necessarily be self interested?. If a colony of individuals which are born into specific castes to work for the purpose of facilitating the queens reproduction is a more effective way of spreading said genes than allowing for more individualism then why wouldn't natural selection favor it?
BTW I read the selfish gene years ago... Could probably use a refresher but I'm familiar with it and as I noted above I don't really see a conflict between his thesis and the idea of a superorganism