Recognition and communication are essential processes when it comes to interaction of organisms with their biotic environment. As especially social interactions are coordinated by communication, it has been predicted that social evolution drives communicative complexity. However, studies comparing olfactory signals or receptor repertoires of solitary and eusocial insects found only mixed evidence for the social complexity hypothesis. We present some possible explanations and especially argue that our current knowledge of intermediate levels of sociality is insufficient to fully test the hypothesis, for which a more balanced comparative dataset would be required. We illustrate with chosen examples how complex communication within the other insect societies can be: Many messages are not unique to eusocial insects. Studying the other insect societies will provide us with a more detailed picture of the link between social and communicative complexity.

当涉及生物与其生物环境的相互作用时，识别和交流是必不可少的过程。由于特别是社会互动是通过交流来协调的，因此可以预见，社会进化会推动交流的复杂性。但是，比较孤独和正常社交昆虫的嗅觉信号或受体组成的研究发现，对于社交复杂性假说只有混合证据。我们提出了一些可能的解释，尤其是认为，我们目前对社会中间水平的了解不足以完全检验假设，为此需要一个更加平衡的比较数据集。我们通过选定的例子来说明其他昆虫社会内部的复杂交流如何：许多信息并非善社交昆虫所独有。