Journal
TRENDS IN ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION
Volume 24, Issue 6, Pages 341-349Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE LONDON
DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2009.01.013
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Funding
- Academy of Finland [121078]
- US National Science Foundation [EF0328455]
- Academy of Finland (AKA) [121078, 121078] Funding Source: Academy of Finland (AKA)
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [0816690, 1204352] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Unicolonial ant populations are the most extensive cooperative units known in nature, forming networks of interconnected nests extending sometimes hundreds of kilometers. Within such a supercolony, worker altruistic behavior might be maladaptive, because it seems to aid random members of the population instead of relatives. However, recent genetic and behavioral data show that, viewed on a sufficiently large scale, unicolonial ants do have colony boundaries that define very large kin groups. It seems likely that they are family groups that continue to express their kin-selected behavior as they grow to extreme sizes. However, at extreme sizes, kin selection theory predicts that these behaviors are maladapted and evolutionarily unstable, a prediction that is supported by their twiggy phylogenetic distribution.
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