Data from: Monogamy promotes altruistic sterility in insect societies

Second, we broaden the stability analysis—which focused on the invasibility of populations where either all workers are fully-sterile or all workers are fully-reproductive—to identify where intermediate pure or mixed evolutionarily-stable states may occur. Third, we consider a broader range of demographically-explicit ecological scenarios relevant to altruistic worker non-reproduction and to the evolution of eusociality more generally.

We find that, in the absence of genetic constraints, monogamy always promotes altruistic worker sterility and may inhibit spiteful worker sterility. Our extended analysis demonstrates that an exact population-genetics approach strongly supports the prediction of inclusive-fitness theory that monogamy promotes sib-directed altruism in social insects.