Social insects display an elaborate communism where indi vidualism is submerged for the welfare of the community to a degree unattained in human society. Wheeler has stressed how tradition and social inheritance in man have enabled him to pre serve and accumulate his capital of culture and advancement, whereas social insects have to begin each new colony anew only with the structural and instinctive equipment provided by true or organic heredity. In this difference he sees the explanation why so little change has taken place in social insects, although they were highly evolved before the origin of man. The distinction, he adds, is nevertheless not absolute, since social insects bequeath their nests, pastures and hunting grounds to successive generations. Insects have not acquired the use of tools, but, on the other hand, they are the only animals besides man that have succeeded in domesticating other animals, and even plants, as well as enslav ing their own kind. Means of communication, although not through speech, have undoubtedly been evolved by means of the senses of smell and touch and also through sound production. In the tropics insect societies are of considerable duration and are liable to outstrip means of subsistence : just as the colonizing expeditions of man have gone forth to establish themselves in fresh lands, the swarming propensities of bees, wasps and ants are for a like purpose. Specialization of individuals to specific trades or duties in human society finds its analogy in the castes and differences of behaviour among the individuals of an insect community. Just as in man, the warrior caste has its place in insect society and defensive as well as attacking exploits are prev alent. The nests of social insects, like human habitations and buildings, afford food and shelter for alien creatures and many are more or less tolerated by their insect and human hosts. Insect societies, to quote again from Wheeler, represent final and rela tively stable accomplishments which have developed along purely physiological and instinctive lines, and this instinctive basis, with the consequent absence of education and tradition, constitutes a fundamental difference between them and human societies.
BouoGRAPHY.—The whole subject of social insects is admirably discussed by W. M. Wheeler in The Social Insects, their Origin and
Evolution (1928), which is accompanied by a full bibliography.
Social Wasps:—G. W. and E. G. Peckham, Wasps, Solitary and Social (1905) ; 0. H. Latter, Natural History of Some Common Animals (1904) ; P. and N. Rau, Wasp Studies Afield (1918) ; C. Janet in Mem. Soc. Zoologique France (vol. viii., 189'5) and other papers; E. Roubaud in Annales Sciences Nat., Zoologie (loth ser. vol. i., 1916) and P. Marchal in that same journal for 1896.