LETTERS

摘要

I enjoyed reading Peter Buston and Marian Wong's fascinating article "Why Some Animals Forgo Reproduction in Complex Societies" (July-August). I particularly appreciated that the authors carried out such challenging experimental proofs of their theories. In a more subjective realm, I wondered whether the authors have thought about how some of their ideas might apply to human social organizations. The ranks of dominant and subordinate clownfish got me thinking about bureaucracies in which managers line up and wait for a shot at the top spot-or abandon and seek a spot in a new organization. I was especially struck by the equilibrium mechanism suggested by the authors: that the size distribution of fish tends toward a kind of step function because if a smaller fish (underling bureaucrat) gets too big, then it will either be expelled or will expel its superior.