Colony Organisation and Division of Labour

Abstract

In his famous “pin factory” example, Adam Smith (1776) calculated that a group of labourers with division of labour could produce at least 240 times more pins per day than a group of labourers without division of labour. He attributed this massive increase in productivity to several factors. Firstly, division of labour results in workers becoming more skilled at specific tasks through repetition. Secondly, workers avoid time costs caused by frequent switching between tasks and, thirdly, workers can focus on tasks for which they show greater capability or “talent”. All three factors are likely to apply to workers of social insect colonies as well, and there is empirical and theoretical support for the importance of these factors for the benefits of division of labour (Julian and Cahan 1999; Duarte et al. 2012; Goldsby et al. 2012; Leighton et al. 2017; but also see Dornhaus 2008). It is, thus, not surprising that almost all social insect species studied so far show at least some degree of division of labour (Holldobler and Wilson 1990, 2009). The level of behavioural specialisation for tasks varies among species, workers and tasks (Wilson 1984; Robinson and Page 1995; Sempo and Detrain 2004; Mertl and Traniello 2009). It is commonly assumed that division of labour is an important reason for the ecological success of social insects (Wilson 1971; Oster and Wilson 1978; Holldobler and Wilson 1990). While it is challenging to experimentally quantify the benefits of division of labour (but see Ulrich et al. 2018), there can be little doubt that division of labour substantially improves the performance of an insect colony.