The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward O. Wilson

For example, a worker bee surrenders her reproductive capability, which is individually costly, but this benefits her mother, the queen bee. Specifically, the process of natural selection may favor genes that produce behaviors costly to an individual if the cost is outweighed by resulting benefits to family members. Popularized by William Hamilton in the 1960s, kin selection theory extends Darwin’s theory of the natural selection of competitive traits to include altruistic behaviors between close family members. To do so, he debunks the accepted explanation for social behavior in animal communities known as “kin selection theory.” Moreover, “their gardening is organized as an assembly line, with the material passed from one specialized caste to the next.” Eusociality is rare, practiced by only about two dozen species, but, Wilson says, these are “the most successful species in the history of life.” The success of humankind speaks for itself, but ants’ domination is impressive as well: “the mass of ants exceeds that of all other insects combined.” Wilson tackles the question of why a few species evolved to become eusocial, while most did not. This compost supports the growth of a unique fungus that serves as the ants’ principal diet.

These insects cut pieces of plant matter, carry them back to their nest and chew them into mulch, which they then fertilize with their waste.

Among the many examples Wilson cites of eusocial ant behavior is that of the leafcutter ant. Both ants and humans are, in Wilson’s words, “eusocial animals,” meaning they work cooperatively to build complex societies which depend on divisions of labor and acts of altruism by individuals. Invoking the title of a masterpiece by Paul Gaugin, Wilson aspires to resolve the questions: Where do we come from? What are we? We are we going? Wilson is considered a leading expert on ants, and his vast knowledge of insect behaviors, especially social behaviors, informs his explanations of human cooperative and altruistic impulses. Nevertheless, this 2012 book boldly claims to finally disclose the truth about human nature. Having devoted much of his career to reconciling social behavior with evolutionary theory, in 2010 Wilson abandoned the widely accepted “kin selection theory” in favor of an alternative, “group selection.” This amounted to something like heresy within the evolutionary biology community. Wilson, the pioneering architect of “sociobiology,” published The Social Conquest of Earth, an extended strike against established thinking on social evolution. In 2012, at the age of 82, Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard biologist Edward O.

The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward O. Wilson