Fitness benefits and emergent division of labour at the onset of group living.

ABSTRACT: The initial fitness benefits of group living are considered to be the greatest hurdle to the evolution of sociality¹, and evolutionary theory predicts that these benefits need to arise at very small group sizes². Such benefits are thought to emerge partly from scaling effects that increase efficiency as group size increases^3-5. In social insects and other taxa, the benefits of group living have been proposed to stem from division of labour^5-8, which is characterized by between-individual variability and within-individual consistency (specialization) in task performance. However, at the onset of sociality groups were probably small and composed of similar individuals with potentially redundant-rather than complementary-function¹. Self-o

SUBMITTER: Ulrich Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6121774 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature