Nutrition is thought to be a major driver of social evolution, yet empirical support for this hypothesis is scarce. Here we illustrate how conceptual advances in nutritional ecology illuminate some of the mechanisms by which nutrition mediates social interactions in insects. We focus on experiments and models of nutritional geometry and argue that they provide a powerful means for comparing nutritional phenomena across species exhibiting various social ecologies. This approach, initially developed to study the nutritional behaviour of individual insects, has been increasingly used to study insect groups and societies, leading to the emerging field of social nutrition. We discuss future directions for exploring how these nutritional mechanisms may influence major social transitions in insects and other animals.

营养被认为是社会发展的主要驱动力，但是缺乏关于这一假设的经验支持。在这里，我们说明了营养生态学的概念性进步如何阐明营养介导昆虫社会互动的一些机制。我们专注于营养几何学的实验和模型，并认为它们为比较表现出各种社会生态的物种的营养现象提供了一种有力的手段。这种方法最初是用来研究单个昆虫的营养行为的，现在已被越来越多地用于研究昆虫群体和社会，从而导致了社会营养领域的兴起。我们讨论了探索这些营养机制如何影响昆虫和其他动物的主要社会转变的未来方向。