Much of what we can see of the family lives of animals and plants can be explained by the 'inclusive fitness theory'. In a nutshell, this means that you will work harder to benefit the lives of your immediate family than on behalf of those who are more distant cousins. The reason? Closer relatives are more likely to share a greater proportion of your genes -- which makes perfect sense if evolution is about passing your genes on to the next generation.

This line of thought informed the 'selfish genes' view of life, promoted by Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, in which living creatures are simply the vehicles for generations of genes.

To be sure, it makes sense of otherwise bizarre circumstances. Why, for example, do female bees look after the offspring of another female -- the queen bee -- when they do not have the chance to reproduce? Because queen and workers are close relatives. The workers do not strive for the queen, they care for offspring in which they themselves have a genetic stake.

Now there is a wasp in the ointment, thanks to David C. Queller of Rice University in Houston, Texas, and colleagues. Rice's team has found that female workers of the wasp species Polistes dominulus accept complete reproductive subjugation by their queen -- despite being completely unrelated to either her or her offspring.

This observation, achieved by a kind of genetic 'fingerprinting' similar to that used in human paternity or forensic cases, appears to fly in the face of inclusive fitness theory.

So what's happening in Polistes dominulus? Colonies of this species are founded in the spring by single, mated foundresses, who lay most of the eggs, while unrelated females take on the riskier business of foraging. The first brood -- mainly female workers -- appears in June, with later broods containing more males and females destined to be the next year's foundresses. What do the workers get out of this altruism, in which they slave away with no prospect of genetic reward?

Queller's group suggests that palace revolutions may be the key. In most of the colonies they observed, workers that had been biding their time since the founding of the colony, usurped their queens and took on the regal mantle. Of 28 colonies collected in the late spring of 1996, "11 showed a total of at least 13 queen turnovers", the team reports in Nature [15 June 2000]1.

So worker wasps, it seems, stick it out as menial servants of an unrelated queen for the small but significant chance that they might, one day, get the opportunity to reproduce. This grim story is completely unlike that of any insect society, and much more like those seen in vertebrates such as birds or fishes, in which subordinates assume dominance following a struggle, or the death of the dominant player.

It also gives me the chance to air a lame sporting anecdote, in which the soccer player Jerry Queen was alleged to have been involved in what diplomatic writers call a 'free and frank exchange of views' at his club, Crystal Palace. The next day's headlines read 'Queen in brawl at Palace'.