Behaviour and Social Evolution of Wasps

• Introduction; Systematics and sociality of wasps; Theories on the evolution of eusociality; Problems with the kin-selection hypothesis; Comparison of dominance relations and proportion of multi-female nests in the Polistinae; Ropalidia fasciata in Okinawa, Japan: a species with flexible social relations; Social relations in wasp colonies in the wet tropics; Polistine wasps in Panama; Role of multiple comb construction and perennial nature of nests: Polistine wasps in Australia; Multi-queen societies: swarm-founding wasps in the tropics; Social lives of the other social wasps; Origin of pleometrosis: altruism or mutualism?; Manipulation of progeny by mother groups: an hypothesis for the evolution of multi-queen societies; Kin-selection and multi-queen social systems; Conclusion; References; Index.

'Ito is a wasp enthusiast and this book will be chiefly enjoyed by entomologists. He does not present major new ideas, but the book's strength is the careful experimental account of many years' study of paper wasps, mostly of the species whose biology was previously unknown, and much of it previously published in Japanese journals ... this is a worthwhile book that will materially contribute to a more pluralistic study of the evolution of advanced insect societies.'Times Higher