The similarity between social
insects and human associations is clearer than in the case of a comparison
between an example from either group and a cell-community, because the
higher forms lack the organic contact of the components which is so
prominent a feature in the lower instance. The social bonds are looser and
they allow a freer play of the constituents; but nevertheless the same laws
that control the activities of the cells making up what we now take as the
individual element, command obedience on the part of the interrelated
members of an insect community with equal strictness.
A butterfly or a moth is primarily egoistic and unsocial in the ordinary
sense during its entire life-history, until the final reproductive act
which has a value to the species. The caterpillar larva devotes all of its
energies to feeding and growing, unconcerned with the final duties of the
moth with which it is connected just as the indifferent unit of a young
_Volvox_ colony is related to a reproducing member of the full-grown
organism. Now and then, it is true, species like the so-called tent
caterpillar are met with where numerous larvae spin silken communal nests
to which they retire at night and in which they remain to molt.
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