Insect reproduction and representative democracy

[FaxModem1]

How would a governmental body like the United Federation of Planets, the Galactic Republic, Systems Commonwealth, etc, deal with an insect race with a high reproduction rate petitioning them, and wanting to join their government as a member?

For example, the Prawns from District 9 wished to join the UFP, how would domestic politics be decided when after a couple of generations, Prawns would be the numerical majority of their population? How would this reshape their politics? Their government, etc.?

Would they even care?

[Elheru Aran]

Good question. A few of mine own:

How likely is this race to spread?

Do they have natural population control measures in place on a species level, or is it simply a matter of how many resources are available?

High reproduction rates frequently accompany short lifespans; is this the case here?

How intelligent is this race? If it's petitioning to join something like the UFP, then obviously it's smart enough to get into space and IIRC invent warp drive. But are ALL the members of this race intelligent, or is it some kind of situation where only higher level members of the species are actually intelligent and the majority are dull-minded worker or soldier units?

EDIT: These questions matter because they do influence how the Space UN might decide, as far as I'm concerned.
EDIT2 (so I don't forget this point I was going to make): Depending on the intelligence of the population, a decision could be made that only the intelligent bug-aliens actually qualify for Space-UN citizenship and the rest don't count. A proviso would obviously be in order that the basic rights of sapient species still apply to the 'worker' and 'soldier' classes, they simply might not qualify for political privileges such as the ability to vote-- similar perhaps to how we treat people with mental disabilities.

Alternatively, it's pretty likely that the Space-UN would mostly be run by the leadership of the various aligned planets, and as such it doesn't matter that much how many of a certain species there are until they start spreading over a majority of planets.

[Esquire]

I can't speak to the Federation, but assuming that all the insects are sapient and a government structured similarly to the U.S.;

A) they dominate the House of Representatives-equivalent, because their home districts have many more congressbugs than others have congressmen (/congressvulcans, congressspacevikings, etc.), and if they move to new areas the local representatives will be congressbugs as of the next election cycle.

B) it doesn't really matter, because there's a non-proportional legislative body (the Senate) with the ability to kill any legislation that's only in favor of the bugs. Worst-case scenario is legislative deadlock, at least until such time as the bugs control all the represented territories - in which case, sorry, democracy means they get to decide what happens and if you don't like it you can leave.

Again, using the U.S. government for ease of analogy. In a parliamentary system, I'm not sure how things would go.

[FaxModem1]

Let's assume it's the Prawn, or as another example, the Krogan from Mass Effect, in which they seem to have full lives, be fully sentient, and their spread is limited to only what resources they have access to, not biology.

Both of these species reproduce due to natural biology, and are only limited by environment/resources.

In Mass Effect, when faced with Krogan domination, the Council's answer to this conundrum was the Genophage, effectively neutralizing the Krogan reproduction rate by making the majority of their offspring stillborn. That isn't exactly the most humanitarian answer a government could give. So I rather doubt that the UFP would do it. In District 9, the MNU actually burn any eggs they find, again, not a humanitarian course of action. So I doubt that the UFP or similar bodies would do so.

[Simon_Jester]

Ultimately, any species that continues to reproduce at exponential rates indefinitely becomes a threat to everyone else around them. A species that is intelligent collectively, and capable of good government, will be able to recognize this and negotiate about things like population control. A species that does not understand or does not care about this issue will eventually force everyone around them into a "it's them or us" situation, and things inevitably get ugly from there.

[Esquire]

Why would I, an Insectoid (TM), agree to insecticide for the benefit of you damn dirty apes? If there's more of us, it's because we're better suited to the interstellar ecology; that's not our problem.

[Lord Revan]

While we don't know their reproduction rate doesn't UFP already have an insectoid race as member in form of the Xindi insectoids, granted we don't know when the Xindi joined UFP but if Daniels is to be belivied they did join sometime before the battle of Procion V(sic) and the Xindi don't seem expansionist since we don't see them after the 2150s.

Also while the starfleet member/federation citizen was Xindi primate (one Degra's decendents) the 5 races of the Xindi seem to do major political desession collectively so I'd suspect if one race joined the Federation they all would.

[FaxModem1]

While we don't know their reproduction rate doesn't UFP already have an insectoid race as member in form of the Xindi insectoids, granted we don't know when the Xindi joined UFP but if Daniels is to be belivied they did join sometime before the battle of Procion V(sic) and the Xindi don't seem expansionist since we don't see them after the 2150s.

Also while the starfleet member/federation citizen was Xindi primate (one Degra's decendents) the 5 races of the Xindi seem to do major political desession collectively so I'd suspect if one race joined the Federation they all would.

Possible, it's also possible that the Aquatics, the Arboreals, and the Primates exterminated the Reptilians and the Insectoids in a war after their alliance was broken during the events of season 3 of Enterprise. As we know that the Avians were also wiped out in such a conflict(which is what birthed the alliance in the first place).

It could also be that the Insectoids aren't as reproductive as the Krogans or Prawns would be.

[Lord Revan]

While we don't know their reproduction rate doesn't UFP already have an insectoid race as member in form of the Xindi insectoids, granted we don't know when the Xindi joined UFP but if Daniels is to be belivied they did join sometime before the battle of Procion V(sic) and the Xindi don't seem expansionist since we don't see them after the 2150s.

Also while the starfleet member/federation citizen was Xindi primate (one Degra's decendents) the 5 races of the Xindi seem to do major political desession collectively so I'd suspect if one race joined the Federation they all would.

Possible, it's also possible that the Aquatics, the Arboreals, and the Primates exterminated the Reptilians and the Insectoids in a war after their alliance was broken during the events of season 3 of Enterprise. As we know that the Avians were also wiped out in such a conflict(which is what birthed the alliance in the first place).

It could also be that the Insectoids aren't as reproductive as the Krogans or Prawns would be.

while it's possible the other 3 exterminated the reptilians and insectoids, it seemed like the Xindi were ashamed of killing of the avians also the insectoids switched sides at end and really only the reptilians had to be defeated to prevent them from destroying Earth.

Also we see an Insectoid hatchery in ENT so someone with access to ENT DvDs can probably determine how strong their reproduction rate is, though going by memory there seemed to be quite a few hatchlings.

[Elheru Aran]

So if the insects have a high birth rate and they're all sentient... well yeah, that kinda sucks for the rest of the space-UN. That's about how that turns out, anyway.

It could be worked out though, at least temporarily, by using the bug-species as the primary explorers and colonizers-- that way you would be shunting their high birth rate outside the boundaries of the Federation or whatever, and they would be able to populate their colony worlds quickly, replacing attrition.

A lot of it will come down to how intelligent they are though. If they're something like Tyranids, where only a few dominant bio-units are capable of intelligence and the vast majority are unthinking animals, you wouldn't have that problem.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I don't think it was ever stated what their reproductive rates were, but one of the OP's initial examples (the Systems Commonwealth) did indeed have a sentient, insectoid, hive-breeding race as a member (the Than I think they were called, Rommie's helmsbug in the pilot episode was one) who were not an overwhelming influence on galactic affairs, even after the Commonwealth fell.

[Elheru Aran]

That depends, I suppose, on how truly fast their reproduction rate is, and on their ability to use the resources of a planet to sustain themselves. If representation is per planet or per system, and the bug race only occupies say two or three planets of a system, then even if all the other members of the space-UN have only one planet in their respective systems, it's still not disproportionate.

But if it's a situation where they go from one planet to twenty in as many years... welp.

[Lord Revan]

But then that's true for any fast breeding species, insects (IIRC) breed in large numbers because they're weak individually so large numbers of offspring allow them to make sure at least some make to maturity.

if they were smart a sapient insectoid species would use this to their advantage, instead of colonizing fertile and semi-peaceful worlds that would potentially cause the others to turn on them (most sapient creatures don't want to die as default) they carve a niche for themselves at colonizing worlds where the conditions were so harsh that attrition among the colonist would be high, but the planets contained some resources that would benefitial to overall community, essentially turn a potential problem into an asset.


If on the other hand most of the species consisted of unsapient "drones" then you wouldn't allow those species to boost their vote count by including the members not (theorectically) capable of independent thought (while the opinions of this board on how capable of independent thinking most conservatives are, as biologically humans they're at least theoretically capable of independent thinking).

[Alyrium Denryle]

Let's assume it's the Prawn, or as another example, the Krogan from Mass Effect, in which they seem to have full lives, be fully sentient, and their spread is limited to only what resources they have access to, not biology.

Both of these species reproduce due to natural biology, and are only limited by environment/resources.

In Mass Effect, when faced with Krogan domination, the Council's answer to this conundrum was the Genophage, effectively neutralizing the Krogan reproduction rate by making the majority of their offspring stillborn. That isn't exactly the most humanitarian answer a government could give. So I rather doubt that the UFP would do it. In District 9, the MNU actually burn any eggs they find, again, not a humanitarian course of action. So I doubt that the UFP or similar bodies would do so.

Really simple. Change your system of representation. Monocameral parliament, representation is apportioned by species (each species gets, say, five representatives that are apportioned according to local rules and regulations).

That handles the problem of insectoids dominating the government.

Their colonial expansion can be handled diplomatically so that...yeah, they take the marginal worlds. Given that they are fast breeders, they would have been limited by attrition anyway, and sapience or no sapience, they probably dont have psychological problems with high attrition rates because having them in their evolutionary past would have been counter-productive.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, you'd have to give them planets so marginal that they don't simply outgrow the rest of the galaxy to the point where they have disproportionate impact on galactic affairs. I mean, the Council in Mass Effect does run on a "one species, one vote" system of representation, or in some cases a "one species, no votes" system. It simply doesn't matter when you have a massively burgeoning population of krogans that colonizes every newly discovered world as fast as it can be located, or starts trying to muscle in on everyone else's colonies, because the population pressure they face is just that bad.