EVOLUTION AND HUMAN DESTINY 



tional purpose, is certainly good reason to suspect that 

 this process may be intimately connected with the 

 existence problems of the colony. 



On purely theoretical grounds, that is by extrapola- 

 tion from evolutionary pattern, one would expect a 

 colony, once it approaches the degree of integration 

 that would justify its being termed a societal organism, 

 to develop a reproductive system characteristic of an 

 organic entity. 



Among the insect colonies, features of the reproduc- 

 tive process emerge which are strongly suggestive of 

 such a development. It is among the bees and related 

 species that the reproductive process has gone the 

 furthest in the direction of a societal method of repro- 

 duction. Here all the eggs developing into new bees 

 are produced by just one specially equipped female. 

 This female is fertilized by only one male bee, that is 

 selected by an eliminative process somewhat reminis- 

 cent of the elimination of male sperm in female mam- 

 mals prior to fertilization. 



Other members of the colony have developed their 

 own specialties, but at the expense of their reproduc- 

 tive faculties. The rather special process of reproduc- 

 tion of these insects is effective in preserving the estab- 

 lished pattern of the colony, for as the colony becomes 

 more and more of an entity, the biological purpose of 

 reproduction appears to be more one of preservation of 

 the colony rather than merely the reproduction of 



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