262 Self and the Phenomenon of Life
b2726 Self and the Phenomenon of Life: A Biologist Examines Life from Molecules to Humanity “9x6”the scope of environment in which the cells could survive, and provided
considerable evolutionary advantage. (See Fig. 3.1 in Chapter 3 for cell
organelles.)
12.4 Lessons from Insect Communities
Intra-species cooperation is highly developed in insects. The most
impressive prototypes are the social insects such as honeybees, ants and
termites. These animals exhibit the phenomenon of eusocialism, a hier-
archical, genetically determined social caste system, with strict division
of labor including a reproductive role, that molds the entire community
to behave like a super-organism, in which the constituent selves become
subservient to the mega-self. The dedication of the individual insects to
the colony is comparable to the dedication of the individual animal cells
to the entire body.
Bees and ants both belong to the order Hymenoptera (having
membranous wings). In the honeybee society, each hive is made up of
a single queen, a few hundred drones, and up to 50,000 workers. The
queen lives to about two years and lays about 1,500 eggs per day. The
drones come from unfertilized eggs; they live to eight weeks and their
sole function is to mate with the virgin queen. The great majority of a
colony consists of workers, which are fertilized females. Only one among
the fertilized females becomes queen, after being fed with royal jelly
when young. The reproductive function of the workers are suppressed
by a hormone produced by the current queen, but in the event the
queen dies, one of the workers will be chosen to be the new queen.
As the name implies, worker bees tend to all kinds of chores including
nursing the young, housekeeping, construction and defense of the hive,
and foraging. Workers have a short lifespan, only six weeks at the most,
having literally “worked themselves to death.”
Like honeybees, ants are highly eusocial. The main difference is,
while all species of honeybees engage in the same kind of business (honey
collection), ants evolved into multiple-task species, each species doing a