A story of an eusocial human species: Antman

This is a sketch of a eusocial human species modelled on ants. Let's call this species Antman.

The Antman has 3 castes: Workers, Soldiers, Researchers. Most of them are specialized, but a few are generalists who act as synthesizers and communicators between specialized areas.

Some of the generalists also act as temporary leaders, but there are no formally elected leaders.

An Antman society unit is a nest. The size of a nest depends on the local geography, but usually would grow up to that of a big modern city. The size is a balance between economy of scale, which favors bigness, and speed of moving things around inside, which favors smallness. Nearby nests usually cooperate very closely, more than a modern state.

Reproduction of biological organisms within an Antman society is done in reproductive factories. There are no actual queens like ants, and these reproductive factories are run by workers. The genetic material used is limited in variety to ensure a reproductive bottleneck and genetic sameness within a nest.

Genetic variations, epigenetic markers, and structured education, are used to produce desired variations in the population. For example (not exhaustive, of course), soldiers get extra boost in reaction speed and sensory sharpness, and researchers get boost in working memory, workers in spatial imagination, etc. The reason not everyone gets equal boosts is because there are some tradeoffs to be made, and so specialization is useful. The structured education is run in schools run by workers, except for education of the most elite researchers, which is taught by a mix of workers and researchers.

Due to their rigid social structure, most Antmans are not built with complex social intelligence, which is wasteful for them. But sociological researchers get extra points in that, and they are usually used in human-antman diplomatic and friendship missions.

The basic ideas are already here: ant caste system, collective control of reproduction, genetic engineering. Unlike ants, Antman can't arise purely from biological evolution. A cultural evolution is needed for a big group of humans to start using genetic engineering and collective reproduction. I can't see what kind of scenario could make such a society arise stably within this century.

For such a species to rise, it's necessary for it to remain competitive with respect to ordinary humans. The greatest advantage of Antmans is their eusociality, the extreme cooperation. But to get there, it's necessary to institute social sameness. A society made of creatures that are genetically too different cannot be as eusocial as ants, or cells in a multicelluar organism.

So, it has to start with social sameness. An Antman society must start with a "seed factory" with small genetic and memetic variation, just like a multicelluar organism must start with a single zygote, or an ant colony with a single queen. But what would a society that's half-human, half-Antman be like? I don't know. I thus don't know how Antmans can evolve.

Once such a species does arise, it could still be mutated into something completely different by its researchers. Researchers are the most valuable and unstable part of the Antman society. They are a constant source of change. With concentrated research power, Antman could find some technology that quickly makes the Antman way of life uncompetitive, and who knows what would come after that!