Aggression and social hierarchy in wasps
A new study by Michael A. Cant, University of Cambridge, UK, and others suggests that differences in aggressive behavior in cooperative insect societies are related to "inheritence rank", the chance of successful mating, which increases with higher placement within the social hierarchy. Everyone has to work their way up and can reach the top only when those ahead in rank have died, thereby inheriting from them the right to reproduce. By testing colonies of paper wasps Polistes dominulus, recording aggression and repeatedly removing dominant wasps, they "found that rates of both aggressive ‘displays’ (aimed at individuals of lower rank) and aggressive ‘tests’ (aimed at individuals of higher rank) decreased down the hierarchy." The inheritence rank is the hidden variable that may explain the difference in aggression among seemingly equal individuals. So, even in wasps, the essence of the desire to work up the social ladder is really just a need to get laid. No real surprise there.
The higher the hierarch, the greater the aggression, EurekAlert.org