selfish genes

Here's an example of the power of evolutionary theory.  Suefuji et al just published a paper in Biology Letters describing the relationship between the number of queens in an ant nest and the rearing of new reproductives.  That'd be a cool enough paper on its own, but there's more.  Evolutionary theory makes some specific predictions about when sexuals ought to be produced under different numbers of queens.  If the selfish-gene hypotheses of evolution are true, then nests with multiple queens should race to produce sexual brood earlier than nests with single queens.  And that is exactly…