This is wild. But eusocial insect have a lot of bizarre eccentricities in sex determinism. less than 1% of the colony can actually reproduce, every other being is there for the betterment of the 1%. The workers will mutilate, sacrifice and kill themselves just for the queen to have 0.1% better survivability.
It is helpful to think of the whole colony as a singular organism as opposed to individuals, because our understanding of individual starts breaking down at these levels
Evolution in general works at the level of sub-populations rather than individuals. Genetic variation builds up over time in entire intra-breeding sub-populations of a species (mostly isolated for whatever reason - e.g. forest elephants vs plains elephants), then once in a while there will be a big environmental change (famine, disease, new competition, etc) that may suddenly make these accumulated changes in one sub-population (different from the accumulated changes in the other sub-population) critical to survival rather than benign.
The high-school version of evolution, playing out on an individual level, generation by generation (one baby giraffe, with a longer neck than another, reaches higher leaves and does better) gets the idea across, but evolution is about entire species not individuals, and for the most part any single genetic variation isn't going to have much impact, unless it's fatal.
The question is, which kind of environment pressure and context lead this ants to this adaptation. Perhaps a high mortality rate in their own species happened at some point? Maybe something like an STD?
The other thing to note is that integration of "foreign" genetic material also happens inside of individuals themselves, e.g. the famous cases of gut bacteria or mitochondrial DNA. One general puts a lot of emphasis on inter-species competition, e.g. predators and preys, but there's a lot of cooperation and symbiosis happening at all levels too.
> The question is, which kind of environment pressure and context lead this ants to this adaptation
Given how unusual this seems to be, maybe it's better to ask how it happened rather than why it happened? If this was environmental pressure, then why don't we see the same thing happening elsewhere (was this really such a unique environment)? Maybe it's better regarded as an artifact of messy evolution - a quirk rather than a feature?
It'd seem surprising if this persists for long (evolutionary timescale) given that the mother "species" is expending resources to support a different "species", unless there is some kind of symbiosis here - a mutual benefit.
I agree but in these cases the genetic variance that is being accumulated, is only limited to a few individuals who more or less don't interact with the world, except through their workers. But the workers themselves have no way of accumulating or passing on the genetic variation.
In some sense the genetic feedback loop for ant population is designed in such a way that, it makes sense when looking at each ant colony as a singular organism
Unlike the giraffe, or elephants, who are individually capable of accumulating genetic variations.
> It is helpful to think of the whole colony as a singular organism as opposed to individuals, because our understanding of individual starts breaking down at these levels
Can't the organisms be viewed as individuals with a shared common goal.
Maybe.
The workers are involuntary but willing participants, in a grand scheme where the queens and males get to create new generations. But this is possible only if we anthropomorphise a lot.
because at the level of ants/bees I'm not even sure what "individual" even means.
But genetically they originate from the same individual, live for the betterment of the whole, and have very minor say in what happens to themselves or their genes. Much similar to cells in a human being does.
I've heard some bee species vote, though. (not sure if true)
I think you can argue it either way. Either one is trying to map human concepts onto non-human existence and that's an inherently muddy process. What does "individual" really mean, anyway...
Indeed. They are individual organisms, not one large organism. Talk of "superorganisms" seems to presuppose that each individual must seek his own survival and reproduction, but that's untrue. From the point of view of the species and its propagation and survival, it is not a question of individuals. That's just one strategy that may characterize the reproductive behavior of some species, but not others.
No. Neither ant colonies nor individual ants have goals.
Their goal is to ensure the survival of the colony and establish new colonies
That is a category mistake--neither individual ants nor ant colonies know anything at all about such things. They aren't the sorts of entities that can have such goals. Those things are consequences of their behavior, but their behavior is established by evolution--genes that produce behaviors that result in survival of those genes into the future are retained, those that don't perish. Nothing in this picture has goals, only consequences.