Is evolution dictated primarily by genetic factors or primarily by environmental factors? Increasing emphasis in recent years has been placed on extrinsic factors as significantly affecting evolutionary events and pathways. Another major interest area is the origin and maintenance of helping behavior as opposed to selfish behavior. A strict Darwinian interpretation of natural selection would be that helping behavior should be rare outside of parent.offspring and mate interactions, yet social behavior is widespread in mammals and is particularly prominent in humans, and it also occurs in some birds and insects. Social insects represent a valuable model system with which to test and evaluate certain hypotheses that are central to these issues in contemporary biology. Social insects can be manipulated experimentally to address questions with an ease and economy unapproached in social birds, mammals, or humans. The proposed research utilizes primitively social wasps ("paper wasps"), reared in the laboratory according to strict experimental protocols, to attempt to resolve the developmental basis of worker (helping) behavior in them. The work will at the same time address the relative contribution of environmental factors (nourishment, in particular) versus hypothesized intrinsic, genetic factors in the evolution of worker behavior. Most recent research in the field has emphasized genetic factors, whereas the present study will emphasize extrinsic factors. Results of the research will thus bear directly on two areas of central interest in biology today. In addition to addressing basic hypotheses in biology, the specific knowledge gained about wasp nourishment and development may be applicable to the managed rearing of paper wasps, which have high potential as biological control agents where caterpillars (e.g., Cotton bollworm, Tomato budworm, Cabbage looper, etc.) are plant pests, and chemical control of the caterpillars is either unfeasible or undesirable.
