Q93 — Worker Sterility and Kin Selection in Social Insects
In his book “The Origin of Species”, Darwin recognized that the relationships between castes of social insects in the colony can present complications for his theory of natural selection.
By considering the modern understanding of insect evolution, determine whether the following statements are true or false.
A. Worker ants are the most numerous members of the colony as they have achieved greatest reproductive success.
B. Worker ants phenotypically resemble their parents, as they carry parental genes.
C. As widespread sterility in some insect colonies leads to decreased reproductive success for some individuals, it must have come about due to genetic drift.
D. The colony's evolutionary fitness depends on the queen's reproductive success.
Question reproduced from IBO 2022, Theoretical Paper 2, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — attributed to the International Biology Olympiad. Open the full exam PDF · Community solutions (unofficial)