Role of social wasps in understanding the evolution of sociality

Along with flight and holometabolous development, the evolution of sociality is one of the crowning achievements of insects. Social bees, wasps, and ants comprise a vast amount of the animal biomass and are important factors influencing most of the world’s ecosystems. But how did sociality arise? How were major hurtles, including defense against large predators attacking nests and young, achieved? I argue that the evolution of the hymenopteran sting and potent venom were crucial factors enabling survival against predators, the evolution social structure, and the realization of the many benefits of sociality. Social wasps and social wasp biologists including W. D. Hamilton, Mary Jane West-Eberhard, and Bob Jeanne played key roles in developing our understanding of insect sociality. Their pioneering ideas and observations when blended with physiology, toxicology, biochemistry, and behavior enabled development of an extensive data set that recorded damaging and toxic effects of sting venom on potential predators, and development of an insect sting pain scale, a means to measure the instant deterrent value of a sting. Combined, these data reveal that the venoms of social wasps and other insects were important factors in enabling the evolution of sociality, especially higher sociality, in insects.