  Workers in insect societies are sometimes observed to kill male eggs of other
workers, a phenomenon known as worker policing. We perform a mathematical
analysis of the evolutionary dynamics of policing. We investigate the selective
forces behind policing for both dominant and recessive mutations for different
numbers of matings of the queen. The traditional, relatedness-based argument
suggests that policing evolves if the queen mates with more than two males, but
does not evolve if the queen mates with a single male. We derive precise
conditions for the invasion and stability of policing alleles. We find that the
relatedness-based argument is not robust with respect to small changes in
colony efficiency caused by policing. We also calculate evolutionarily singular
strategies and determine when they are evolutionarily stable. We use a
population genetics approach that applies to dominant or recessive mutations of
any effect size.
