The Weak Worker Hypothesis: a new framework for understanding division of labour in social insects.

ABSTRACT: In social species, group functions often benefit from variation among individual group members. Many highly integrated social insect colonies rely on division of labour among colony members and emergent properties of their collective behaviour and physiology. Response threshold models are a prominent proximate explanation of division of labour, but how variation in response thresholds arise is largely unexplored. We propose the Weak Worker Hypothesis, a novel conceptual framework suggesting that response thresholds are determined by an individual's susceptibility to the stressor that underlies the task. Thus, specific tasks are preferentially performed, or at least initiated, by the individuals that are most susceptible to the corresponding stressor. Consequently, 'weak' workers that are s

SUBMITTER: Herman JJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12783416 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature