| Conclusions Schlussfolgerungen |
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Increasing colony size reduces the individual's reproductive output. The safety providing nest, inherited from parental generation(s), prevents offspring from emigration and paves the way to inbreeding; we found an average inbreeding coefficient of 0.69.
From our studies we hypothesize that accumulating negative side effects of social living may make sociality in these species evolutionarily unstable, i.e. may in the long run drive social species to extinction, to be replaced under favourable conditions by new social forms that presumably start as ecophenotype of a given species. |
Literature
Wickler, Wolfgang & Seibt, Uta 2004: Gegenseitige Hilfeleistung und Ausbeutung im Zusammenleben - Spinnen als Modellfall. In: Von Molekülen, Spinnen und Menschen - was leistet die Evolution? Wissenschaft für Jedermann, Deutsches Museum, München, 29-43