ArticleEcology letters2020
The evolution of eusociality: no risk-return tradeoff but the ecology matters.
Article in Ecology letters, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Five decades of misunderstanding in the social Hymenoptera: a review and meta-analysis of Michener's paradox.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2022Pooled it
- Early-season helping yields increasing returns to scale at the onset of eusociality.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Role specialization and reproductive division of labour at the origin of eusociality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Hybridization enables the fixation of selfish queen genotypes in eusocial colonies.Evolution letters · 2021Article
- Conservation insights from wild bee genetic studies: Geographic differences, susceptibility to inbreeding, and signs of local adaptation.Evolutionary applications · 2021Review
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 at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The origin of eusociality in the Hymenoptera is a question of major interest. Theory has tended to focus on genetic relatedness, but ecology can be just as important a determinant of whether eusociality evolves. Using the model of Fu et al. (2015), we show how ecological assumptions critically affect the conclusions drawn. Fu et al. inferred that eusociality rarely evolves because it faces a fundamental 'risk-return tradeoff'. The intuitive logic was that worker production represents an opportunity cost because it delays realising a reproductive payoff. However, making empirically justified assumptions that (1) workers take over egg-laying following queen death and (2) productivity increases gradually with each additional worker, we find that the risk-return tradeoff disappears. We then survey Hymenoptera with more specialised morphological castes, and show how the interaction between two common features of eusociality - saturating birth rates and group size-dependent helping decisions - can determine whether eusociality outperforms other strategies.
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What OpenQuestion holds
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.