Outside opportunities and costs incurred by others

Descriptions of interactions between ants and their ‘guests’ serve to illustrate the thesis that Ewald's theory of the ‘evolution of virulence’ not only applies to interactions between micro-organisms causing infectious diseases and their hosts, but also to interactions between individuals belonging to differing species. For instance, the prediction is put forward and discussed that guests of army ants are, relative to guests of other species of ants, more often parasitic. A key variable in Ewald's theory is ‘transmissibility’. It shows some resemblance to similar variables used in micro-economic theory and in Emerson's sociological Power-Dependence Relations theory. In this article, this variable is called ‘outside opportunities’. In an A–B relation, an outside opportunity for A is anything which constitutes an alternative to what B can provide. It is concluded that in A–B interactions, the more outside opportunities are available to A, the more costs are incurred by B. Differences and similarities between this idea and Game Theory are discussed.