superorganism

Figure 1. Relationship between normalized metabolic rate and body mass for unitary organisms and whole colonies (from Hou et al 2010) The notion that insect colonies and their constituent individuals are analogous to multicellular organisms and their constituent cells has been a controversial idea for decades. Is it useful, for example, to think of an ant colony as a single individual? Do superorganisms really exist as coherent entities? Or do insect colonies function more as aggregations of individuals? Last week, PNAS published the first application of empirical methods to test the…

The mighty insect colonies of ants, termites and bees have been described as superorganisms. Through the concerted action of many bodies working towards a common goal, they can achieve great feats of architecture, agriculture and warfare that individual insects cannot. That's more than just an evocative metaphor. Chen Hou from Arizona State University has found that the same mathematical principles govern the lives of insect colonies and individual animals. You could predict how quickly an individual insect grows or burn food, how much effort it puts into reproduction and how long it lives…

Sorry to keep harping on Hoelldobler & Wilson's The Superorganism.  But Wilson's section on ant evolution is so bad, so out of touch with the state of the field that I can't help but to rant. Both Chapter 7 (The Rise of the Ants) and Chapter 8 (Ponerine Ants: The Great Radiation) are predicated on the argument that certain groups of poneromorph ants form a clade. In defense of this assumption, Wilson writes (page 322): ...Barry Bolton has recently split Ponerinae into seven subfamilies (Ponerinae, Amblyponinae, Ectatomminae, Heteroponerinae, Paraponerinae, Proceratiinae, and the fossil…

Who is supposed to read The Superorganism? I can't really tell.  While I'm enjoying Holldobler & Wilson's latest tome, I am perplexed at the book's target audience.  The text switches between broadly anthropomorphic prose clearly aimed for a general audience and obtuse jargon digestible only by the experienced biologist. I get the feeling that the authors- at least one of them, anyway- desired a technical book more along the lines of Bourke & Franks, while the marketing department at Harvard University Press wished to trade on the authors' name recognition with a glossy coffee-table…

In the comments, Eric Eaton makes an observation: Iâm left wondering (just a little) why Alex has such a beef with Dr. Wilson. This is not the first post taking a jab at Wilson, so while Alex makes an excellent point, Iâm also sensing some underlying issues hereâ¦. Eric is right there's an issue.  It is one many myrmecologists, especially systematists, have been tip-toeing around for a while now. The short version is that Wilson is no longer at the leading edge of myrmecology.  As he has fallen out of step with the practicing research community, his public ant commentary is increasingly at…