Imagine an intellgent queen, with a range of different types of sterile workers. Since the queen is smart, she it isn’t limited to using the same genome in each type of worker—she can just put in the genes that are useful. Does this diversity reduce the level of cooperation between the workers? Not really—the genes of each worker have but one way to immortality—help the queen to reproduce.
In other words, the hypothesis that the level of cooperation depends on the proportion of shared genes is only a convenient rule of thumb, and should not be taken as being a golden rule.
Another way of looking at the issue:
Imagine an intellgent queen, with a range of different types of sterile workers. Since the queen is smart, she it isn’t limited to using the same genome in each type of worker—she can just put in the genes that are useful. Does this diversity reduce the level of cooperation between the workers? Not really—the genes of each worker have but one way to immortality—help the queen to reproduce.
In other words, the hypothesis that the level of cooperation depends on the proportion of shared genes is only a convenient rule of thumb, and should not be taken as being a golden rule.
True—the assumptions of evolutionary theory break down when you can control individual genes in individuals.