A dramatic
example, consider social insect colonies, and in particular, the Hymenoptera
(bees, ants and wasps).
In these colonies we find such an extreme degree of
cooperation—division of labor (queen, workers, soldiers, etc.), food-sharing,
information sharing—that it is tempting to view the entire colony as a single
functioning organism.
Indeed, in the case of stinging worker honey bees, there
is not only cooperative labor but also, when necessary, the ultimate sacrifice
in defense of the hive (at least where the invader is a mammal, stinging of
which proves fatal to the bee as the barbed sting is torn out upon being
deposited in the victim). How can such striking cooperation and self-sacrifice
be explained in evolutionary terms?
To explain how worker on helping the queen took precedence over personal reproduction, and it explains how even suicidal behavior could have been selected for propagating the genes that cause it (Dawkins 1989, 174–75).
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