According to most biological theories of evolution, individual members of a group tend to gravitate towards specialist tasks. These models describe some societies very well, such as ant and bee colonies where distinct worker and soldier classes exist and individuals are either one or the other, but not both. These classes serve the ongoing survival of the society.
However, new research by scientists at Ohio State University suggests that societal duties do not need to be assigned by a division of labour (DoL) where every individual has a specific role. Researchers Anthony D'Orazio and Tom Waite argue that generalists have a definite role to play and that this holds true for environments as varied as a single cell, an ocean colony of sea anemones or even a small cookie business.
