Ecological Entomology

Opinion Papers

Like some bees and all ants, termites are eusocial, characterized by reproductive division of labour where sterile workers and soldiers forgo their own reproduction to help and protect the reproductive pair (queen and king). Unlike the haplodiploid eusocial bees and ants, however, both male and female termites are diploid and thus, the assumed genetic predispositions and asymmetries in the degree of genetic relatedness fostering the evolution of eusociality in the social Hymenoptera do not necessarily apply to the infraorder Isoptera. Possible routes for the evolution of termite sociality have now been intensely discussed and controversially debated in the journal Ecological Entomology. One school of researchers assumes that termite eusociality came about by offspring in a family helping each other through proctodeal feeding (also known as anal trophallaxis), eventually leading to specialized reproducers and a caste of altruistic sterile helpers. A contrary view suggests that proctodeal feeding is not altruistic and so may not have played an important role in the origin of eusociality but rather that anal trophallaxis is a consequence of eusocial behaviour.

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