Ants are known for being eusocial. In this set up, the parents live with the young, everyone pitches into taking care of the children and there is a reproductive division of labor. In the cellular level, how are ants able to become eusocial?
For the evolution of eusociality it's rather kin selection playing the major role in that Hamilton's rule br - c > 0 has to be fulfilled, where b = benefit, r = relatedness, c = costs. I.e. if relatedness and other factors lead to that, altruistic helping may evolve.
In the beginning parental manipulation (i.g. less feeding of some offspring) may lower the fecundity an promote helping in offspring. During eusociality maintenance also queen signals may prevent ovaries to develop in workers, so that they are doomed to be helpers. I recomment the book by Bourke and Franks (1995): Social evolution in Ants
Hello Gemmalyn
You can look for some publications by Marc Seid who is interested in behavioral polytheism and division of labor in ants
Regards
Seba
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