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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: that prodigious amount of difference between the fertile and sterile
females of the same species has been produced, which we see in many social
insects.
But we have not as yet touched on the climax of the difficulty; namely, the
fact that the neuters of several ants differ, not only from the fertile
females and males, but from each other, sometimes to an almost incredible
degree, and are thus divided into two or even three castes. The castes,
moreover, do not generally graduate into each other, but are perfectly well
defined; being as distinct from each other, as are any two species of the
same genus, or rather as any two genera of the same family. Thus in
Eciton, there are working and soldier neuters, with jaws and instincts
On the Origin of Species |
