The social insects, like ants, have strict division of labour or a caste-system.
Ants, as eusocial insects living in colonies, carry out a programme of social behavior wherein the tasks such as nursing, foraging,food-collection, nest maintenance, defense and policing are performed to sustain colony homeostasis with precision.
In ants, the conflict over male production has be evolved and resolved by worker policing.
All workers in an ant colony respond to policing behaviour but there could be occasional asymmetries in performing the actual behaviour, then the fight and defence mechanisms successfully takes over.
It has been observed that the worker ants do strict policing by aggressive attacks against additionally reproducing workers.
By and large, ants have genetically coded specialization in policing and defence tasks without any direct selfish interests.
תגובות