An insight to the concept of eusociality in insects

Any species in which organism interacts with another member of its own species is called social. Eusociality is more complex and defined by the presence of three basic attributes viz. cooperative brood care, reproductive division of labor and overlap of generations. Species that lacks one or more these three basic attributes are called presocial. Presocial can further subdivide in to subsocial and parasocial. Subsociality refers to the social behavior between parents and offspring and parasociality refers to the social behavior among members of same generation. Besides these three basic attributes, sometimes other characteristics like communal nest construction and living, altruism, swarming, territorial defense, trophallaxis, corpse management, group decision making, group communication etc may also present. The division of labor creates behavioral groups called castes. Eusociality is sometimes managed by a set of pheromones that alter the behavior of castes in the colony. Advanced eusocial organisms may also show morphological variations between castes. However not all eusocial insect species have distinct morphological variations between castes. Eusociality is mostly found in the phylum Arthropoda but few Chordates also express it. Overall we can say that eusocial organisms prefer the species survival over individual survival as long term survival strategy. Changing environment may cause reversal from eusociality to solitary adaptations and vice versa.