Conflict, Cooperation, and Eusociality

Eusocial societies represent one of the major evolutionary transitions in the history of life. In these systems, individuals cooperate extensively, divide reproductive roles, and coordinate behavior at scales far beyond those seen in solitary organisms. At the same time, cooperative societies are not free from conflict. Social groups must continually balance individual interests against colony-level stability and success.

The Starks Lab studies how conflict and cooperation interact within insect societies, particularly in paper wasps and honey bees. Much of this work examines how reproductive opportunities are distributed within groups, how alternative reproductive strategies emerge, and how cooperative systems remain stable despite persistent evolutionary conflict.

Our research on paper wasps explores how individuals navigate social hierarchies, reproductive competition, and cooperative nesting decisions. These systems provide an important window into the evolutionary transition between solitary and highly eusocial lifestyles, allowing us to examine how cooperation is maintained when individual incentives are not perfectly aligned.

In honey bees, we study conflict within highly cooperative societies. Workers can increase their own fitness through selfish reproductive behavior, creating selective pressure for policing and other colony-level regulatory mechanisms. More broadly, this work investigates how collective systems suppress destabilizing behaviors while preserving the benefits of cooperation.

Together, these projects address broader questions in social evolution: how cooperation emerges, how conflict persists within cooperative systems, and how complex societies maintain organization despite competing individual interests.