ArticleBiology letters2013
Nice to kin and nasty to non-kin: revisiting Hamilton's early insights on eusociality.
Article in Biology letters, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Nepotistic colony fission in dense colony aggregations of an Australian paper wasp.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Inclusive fitness for in-laws.Biology letters · 2018Article
- Decoding ants' olfactory system sheds light on the evolution of social communication.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Sperm mixing in the polyandrous leaf-cutting ant Acromyrmex echinatior.Ecology and evolution · 2014Article
- 50 Years on: the legacy of William Donald Hamilton.Biology letters · 2013Article
- Relatedness modulates reproductive competition among queens in ant societies with multiple queens.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
When helping behaviour is costly, Hamiltonian logic implies that animals need to direct helpful acts towards kin, so that indirect fitness benefits justify the costs. We revisit inferences about nepotism and aggression in Hamilton's 1964 paper to argue that he overestimated the general significance of nepotism, but that other issues that he raised continue to suggest novel research agendas today. We now know that nepotism in eusocial insects is rare, because variation in genetic recognition cues is insufficient. A lower proportion of individuals breeding and larger clutch sizes selecting for a more uniform colony odour may explain this. Irreversible worker sterility can induce both the fiercest possible aggression and the highest likelihood of helping random distant kin, but these Hamiltonian contentions still await large-scale testing in social animals.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.