Altruism in hominids: Rooted in Insect Societies?

To paraphrase Charles Darwin's famous dictum used to characterize the natural world; red-in-tooth-and-claw introduces the curious to the core motivator of self-interest which acts as a type of fitness to Darwinians; however the question remains as to how and why altruism takes place.

With the entomological study of "complex insect societies" of ants, bees and wasps having recently given rise to the gaining of perspective concerning their existence as "superorganisms"-- "singular entities formed by the interactions of their constituent members — rather than as thousands of separate bugs."

Wired Science Blog reports that "Cornell University neurobiologist Ken Reeve and Bert Hölldobler of Arizona State University’s Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity," have developed a theory that posits the greater the degree in which an insect society moves toward specialized labor; the higher the probability that "individual tendencies towards inclusive fitness," occurs in the form of "altruism that increases the chance of perpetuating genes held in common with other individuals — are maximized." This occurrence increases the size of the insect society and moves individual forms of competition to reside at the higher group strata. This creates a situation in which "individual altruistic behaviors ... benefit the group" as a whole.

The application of Reeves and Hölldobler's theory when applied to hominid societies of the past may indicate the role of memes rather than of genes as some might suggest.

But back to Reeve and Hölldobler’s construct regarding complex insect societies which proposes a bifurcated set of "interlocked nested tug-of-war theories." There's the theory that stresses the effects of intragroup competition waged against a theory of intergroup competition. both theories contest one another in a complex dance which results in the creation of a superorganism.

Hölldobler posits that "the maximization of the inclusive fitness of each individual of the society"... creates "competition ... between individuals in the same society" ... which in turn "diminishes as the incipient colonial society becomes larger, better organized and contains better division of labor and ultimately, cohesiveness."

Hölldobler concludes: “Such societies in turn produce more reproductive offspring each year than neighboring societies that are less organized. Thus, genes or alleles that code for such behaviors will be propagated faster.”

Hölldobler introduces his second theory that completes his model by arguing that: “as the colonial organization of one group rises, there is a coincident rise in discrimination against members of other societies of the same species.” The result, for Hölldobler is that competition reinforces evolution. And he concludes that: “In this way the society or insect colony becomes the extended phenotype of the collective genome of the society.”

It is Hölldobler's belief that he and Reeve's explanation of "the evolutionary transition from hierarchical organizations to superorganism" is superior to competing theories because their theory "demonstrates how the target of selection shifts from the individual and kin to group selection.”

Both researchers believe their tug-of-war approach is applicable to other groups of organisms including cells and bacteria as well as primates and humans.

Sources: Wired Science and ScienceDaily