Abstract
Eusocial insects have higher diploid chromosome numbers than most of their closest phylogenetic relatives, and cockroaches (Blattidae) with gregarious offspring have higher 2N's than do those with dispersed young. Along with Templeton (1979; also Hubbell 1977), I suggest that increases in 2N cause the within-brood distribution of sib-sib genetic relatedness to become continuous and reduce variance around the mean relationship. I hypothesize that convergence of actual genotypic similarities on the mean reduces likelihood that sterile workers will discriminate among sibs in need of assistance on the basis of their actual relatedness. Whereas offspring do not appear to gain or to lose from increases in the number of chromosomes, queens might benefit from such increases if those with cooperative broods outreproduce those with less cooperative, more discriminating offspring.
Keywords
EusocialityBiologyBlattidaeOffspringBroodEvolutionary biologyZoologyPloidyPhylogenetic treeInsectCockroachGeneticsDictyopteraEcologyHymenopteraGene
Related Publications
TANKBind: Trigonometry-Aware Neural NetworKs for Drug-Protein Binding Structure Prediction
Abstract Illuminating interactions between proteins and small drug molecules is a longstanding challenge in the field of drug discovery. Despite the importance of understanding ...
Structure-based drug design with geometric deep learning
Structure-based drug design uses three-dimensional geometric information of macromolecules, such as proteins or nucleic acids, to identify suitable ligands. Geometric deep learn...
Publication Info
- Year
- 1979
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 113
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 925-935
- Citations
- 55
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
55
OpenAlex
Cite This
Paul W. Sherman
(1979).
Insect Chromosome Numbers and Eusociality.
The American Naturalist
, 113
(6)
, 925-935.
https://doi.org/10.1086/283445
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1086/283445