THE ORIGIN OF INSECT SOCIETIES. 1 



By Auguste Lameere, 

 Professor at the University of Brussels, Member of the Royal Academy of 



• Belgium^ 



I. 



We have given in the preceding lectures the essential facts relating 

 to insect societies. We have studied successively the termites, the 

 wasps, the bees, and the ants ; we will now take up the complex prob- 

 lem of the origin of phenomena which are among the most instructive 

 in the natural history of organized beings. 



From our knowledge of the genealogy of insects we know that the 

 social customs were established independently among the termites, 

 which undergo an incomplete metamorphosis, and among the hymen- 

 optera, insects with a complete metamorphosis; the wasps, bees, and 

 ants did not descend one from the other, and, moreover, many of the 

 wasps and bees are solitary in habit, so that association appeared 

 independently in these three groups also ; it is even possible that all 

 social wasps did not come from the same solitary ancestor, and it is 

 almost certain that the humblebees, the melipona, and the bees prop- 

 erly speaking, are related to different solitary bees. The social 

 phenomenon is then potygenic among the insects, although it is rela- 

 tively rare if we think of the considerable number of groups which do 

 not present it. However, the societies of termites and the various 

 societies of hymenoptera show common characteristics giving them a 

 close resemblance, which leads to the supposition that comparable 

 circumstances were present at their original constitution. 



The dominant feature of these societies is the presence of neuters, 

 individuals which, among other peculiarities, present that of having 

 their genital organs atrophied and of being normally sterile. These 

 neuters form an immense majority of the population, a couple among 

 the termites, a single fertilized female among most of the wasps, bees, 

 and ants being the only fertile individuals of the association. 

 Through the existence of the neuters, the society of insects, considered 

 in the ensemble as a superorganism, resembles singularly a multi- 



1 Translated by permission from the Revue gen4rale des Sciences, Aug. 15-30, 1915. 



511 



