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Biology

The Evolutionary Significance of Altruistic Behavior in Eusocial Insects

Quick fact

Worker honeybees are more genetically related to their sisters (75% on average) than they would be to their own daughters (50%). This unusual relatedness, due to haplodiploidy, makes helping the queen raise more sisters an evolutionarily better strategy than reproducing themselves.

Why this is interesting

In many ant colonies, worker ants never reproduce—they spend their whole lives building and defending a nest that belongs to the queen. Why would natural selection, which seems to favor genes that make more copies of themselves, ever allow such a selfless lifestyle?