Editing Behavioral ecology (section)

===The monogamy hypothesis===
The monogamy hypothesis states that the presence of monogamy in insects is crucial for [[eusociality]] to occur. This is thought to be true because of Hamilton's rule that states that rB-C>0. By having a [[monogamous]] mating system, all of the offspring have high relatedness to each other. This means that it is equally beneficial to help out a sibling, as it is to help out an offspring. If there were many fathers the relatedness of the colony would be lowered.<ref name=Davies/>{{rp|371–375}}

This monogamous mating system has been observed in insects such as termites, ants, bees and wasps.<ref name=Davies/>{{rp|371–375}} In termites the queen commits to a single male when founding a nest. In ants, bees and wasps the queens have a functional equivalent to lifetime monogamy. The male can even die before the founding of the colony. The queen can store and use the sperm from a single male throughout their lifetime, sometimes up to 30 years.<ref name=Davies/>{{rp|371–375}}

In an experiment looking at the mating of 267 hymenopteran species, the results were mapped onto a [[phylogeny]]. It was found that monogamy was the ancestral state in all the independent transitions to eusociality. This indicates that monogamy is the ancestral, likely to be crucial state for the development of eusociality. In species where queens mated with multiple mates, it was found that these were developed from lineages where sterile castes already evolved, so the multiple mating was secondary.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Boomsma|first=J.J|title=Kin selection versus sexual selection: why the ends to not meet|journal=Current Biology|date=21 August 2007 |volume=17 |issue=16 |pages=R673–R683 |doi=10.1016/j.cub.2007.06.033|pmid=17714661|s2cid=886746|doi-access=free}}</ref>  In these cases, multiple mating is likely to be advantageous for reasons other than those important at the origin of eusociality. Most likely reasons are that a diverse worker pool attained by multiple mating by the queen increases disease resistance and may facilitate a division of labor among workers<ref name=Davies/>{{rp|371–375}}