Biogeography and evolution of social parasitism in Australian Myrmecia bulldog ants revealed by phylogenomics

Four new inquiline social parasite species in the dolichoderine ant genus Tapinoma (Hymenoptera, Formicidae)

“…Recent studies of inquiline social parasite evolution have revealed several convergent pathways by which inquilinism evolves. These include inquiline parasites speciating directly from their future hosts in sympatry, inquilines originating in allopatry and via host-shift speciation, as well as inquilines transitioning secondarily from a different parasitic life history, such as temporary social parasitism and dulosis, to inquilinism (e.g., Rabeling et al 2014 ; Heinze et al 2015 ; Messer et al 2020 ; Borowiec et al 2021 ; Degueldre et al 2021 ; Ward and Branstetter 2022 ; Mera-Rodríguez et al 2023 ). We are confident that further studies of host-parasite co-evolution in Tapinoma will reveal novel insights into the complex mosaic evolution of ant inquiline social parasites.…”

The Carbon-Based Evolutionary Theory (CBET)

“…Animals actively search for and consume food, which provides them with constituent materials and heat or energy. Possibly 100 million years ago, some insects established their social collectives [55,56]. The increased complexity in gene regulation and chemical communication is important to the origin of sociality in insects [55][56][57], which coincides with the structure-function mechanism of the CBET.…”

“…Animal or human social collectives (H6-CBSs and H7-CBSs) have the features of the collaboration of animal or human individuals with different duties working for the collectives. Such closely collaborative collectives can be viewed as superorganisms, while multicellular organisms can be viewed as social collectives of cells [55,56], and unicellular organisms as social collectives of molecules.…”

“…Sociality has been established in around 24,000 species of insects and some species of crustaceans and mammals, which constitute separate events in social evolution [55,56]. Sociality is widespread in Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps) and Blattodea (termites).…”

“…They significantly reduce intra-population competition and struggles, as well as utilize collective advantages to obtain relevant materials and energy to reproduce and maintain them and confront natural selection. Consequently, although sometimes social animals require individuals to sacrifice their freedom and even their lives for the benefit of others, social animals have strong natural selection advantages due to the collaboration within animal social collectives, and they typically have significantly longer lifespans compared to their counterparts without sociality within the same taxa [55][56][57][58]. For example, the naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber) living in society has a lifespan of up to 30 years, several times longer than that of other rodents.…”