Like ants? The female queen mates with one of the male “drones”-most of which die without passing on their genes. What evolutionary benefit does hive society confer? It seesm like such a waste-to produce thousands of males, of which only one will actually mate. And why invest reproductio with just one female?
Are there any clues as to how hive insects came about?
First, hive insects don’t have a fifty fifty split by sexes. The sterile females comprise the bulk of the population in bee hives, at any rate. In at least some cases, sex is determined by the fertility of the queen, who produces male offspring after she has used up the sperm collected when she mated, usually only once.
Drone bees will fly and mate with “foreign” queens, spreading their genetic material to other hives. Queens in most hive species are intolerant of each other.
I am certain that different types of hive insects have different genetic conservation and dispersion methods. With bees, one advantage is obvious. A successful queen will have many eggs awaiting maturation when her egg laying life is over. She is far more likely to have both male and female progeny than a less successful queen. The probability of a successive generation of her hive, and transfer of her genetic heritage to other hives is much greater than pair mating.
I am sure there are other advantages.
Tris
Hive queens have 2 advantages. First, many use chemicals to control their drones. Second, the haploid/diploid thing comes into play (meaning some bees have one copy of chromosomes, others have two copies). Not only does it affect mating, but, genetically speaking, drones are more closely related to their siblings than to their own offspring. Therefore, these drones are more likely to help the queen because it is helping their own genetic lineage.
And now that I’ve fact-checked some of my statements I’ve found a wikipedia article that basically shows that what I thought I knew about this situation was 10X less than what’s actually going on. It is here. Read the “Drone Genetics” section.
I’ve heard this happens in the animal kingdom (well at least it was mentioned once on a Discovery Channel show) - evidently if a female lion dies and leaves several offspring, and her sibling would have to abandon her sole offspring to save the others, the sibling would do so because genetically it makes sense. Although in practice I’m not sure how often this would actually happen.
As for how a drone arose - well my guess is that it is an advantage to be able to produce offspring that are haploid (unfertilized) that can be controlled and are capable of performing many tasks, but to also have diploid (fertilized) workers as well allowing for genetic recombination when needed. Maybe the bee is so well-adapted genetically speaking that it is fully capable of surviving the centuries with less genetic changes than other species that require constant shuffling of genes (like us). Or maybe a random mutation occurred that allowed one bee (or the ancestor of the bee or ant) to start controlling other bees chemically.
Imagine the genetics going on to enable a fully-functional drone to be made from half the copies of chromosomes, while another fully-functional worker to be made from two copies of those chromosomes. I don’t imagine it’s a complete disabling of one set, or else there’d be no difference between haploid/diploid. There’s got to be a lot going on here.
The whole meta-organism idea is useful here - the hive delegates its reproductive function to a small part of itself, reserving other parts of itself to deal with things like food gathering, defence, protection from environmental conditions, etc.
In fact, we could re-frame your query in the context of other non-hive organisms such as mammals - except that our familiarity with this means it doesn’t seem like such a waste to produce thousands of non-reproductive cells/organs/appendages, when only a small part of the body is responsible for reproduction - even though this is completely true.
In order to reproduce effectively, most organisms need to spend a fair bit of time and effort growing, eating, surviving, building up the resources and status for reproduction, waiting for the opportune moment. Meta-organisms like hive insects do the same, they just process the task in a different way.
Thanks-older biology texts refer to hive insects as "primative’-as opposed to more “modern” insects such as beetles. From what you tell me, hive insects appear to be more advanced. It seems like humans have reverted to hive behavior, in the case of some institutions (military dictatorships, etc.)
Fascinating!
“Primitive”, in biology, isn’t the same as it is in common usage-- it just means older. For instance, an ape having hair is the more primitive condition, but that doesn’t mean hairless apes (us) are “more evolved”. I think it is more common these days to use the term “basal”. And humans can’t “revert” to something that was never in their evolutionary history.
Read aboutsuperorganisms, that’s what you’re thinking is leaning toward. It’s a somewhat controversial topic. Some thinkers (Howard Bloom, for example) say human institutions like nation-states and churches are superorganisms competing with each other and subject to selection pressure. Other use the term mainly for hive animals.
Sailboat
Put that together with the information that drones fly out of the hive and mix with the drones of other hives, and I’d say that the drones are effectively acting as the queen’s testicles. Through them, she can mate with other hives.
Yup. Often “primitive” mean just “evolutionary successful enough to remain unchanged through hundreds of thousands years”.
Or often much longer.
But for a topical example, let’s look at the Polar Bear. Polar Bears are closely related to Grizzlies, and can interbreed with them. They are thought to have evolved from a Grizzly-like ancestor fairly recently. Their white fur, aquatic life-style/body plan and different hibernation patterns contrast with the “primitive” forms found in Grizzlies. But Polar Bear populations are shrinking as their suitable habitat shrinks (almost certainly due to climate change), while their more “primitive” cousins find their habitat increasing. So, is it better to be “primitive” or “advanced”?
I keep wondering if it’s possible for a superorganism to develop sentience at a level above, and undetectable by, the individual members.
Yes, we are here. And we’re watching you!! 
I think it is entirely possible this occurs already.
For all we know, no ant is thinking “I’m going to get some food,” but rather, is simply “thinking” (if that’s the word for it) “sniff, walk, sniff, walk, sniff, walk” etc…
Yet even if that is the case, I think it is completely plausible to say that the ant colony knows where the food is, and intentionally sends out lines of ants to retrieve it.
-FrL-