When Darwin's Special Difficulty Promotes Diversification in Insects

Systematic Biology
Frédéric Legendre, Fabien L Condamine

Abstract

Eusociality, Darwin's special difficulty, has been widely investigated but remains a topic of great debate in organismal biology. Eusocial species challenge existing theories, and the impact of highly integrated societies on diversification dynamics is controversial with opposing assertions and hypotheses in the literature. Here, using phylogenetic approaches in termites-the first group that has evolved eusociality-we assessed the fundamental prediction that eusocial lineages have higher diversification rates than non-eusocial clades. We found multiple lines of evidence that eusociality provided higher diversification as compared to non-eusociality. This is particularly exacerbated for eusocial species with "true" workers as compared to species with "false" workers. Because most species with "true" workers have an entirely prokaryotic microbiota, the latter feature is also related to higher diversification rates, but it should be investigated further, notably in relation to angiosperm diversification. Overall, this study suggests that societies with "true" workers are not only more successful at ecological timescales but also over millions of years, which further implies that both organism- and species-level traits act on speci...Continue Reading

Associated Datasets

Feb 15, 2018·Frédéric Legendre, Fabien L. Condamine

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Citations

Jul 11, 2018·Journal of Experimental Zoology. Part B, Molecular and Developmental Evolution·Frédéric Legendre, Philippe Grandcolas
Jan 4, 2021·Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences : CMLS·Thomas ChouvencThomas Bourguignon
Nov 18, 2021·Proceedings. Biological Sciences·Nobuaki Mizumoto, Thomas Bourguignon

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