Social Coordination and the Superorganism

Emerson, Alfred E.

doi:10.2307/2420380

Cited by 111 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 56 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A more specific extension of that statement is that the nest serves as the exoskeleton of the superorganism, in that it performs several of the functions that a heavy, sclerotized, melanized cuticle does in an adult wood feeding cockroach. A nest is the barrier between 'inside' and 'outside', provides mechanical protection and defense against predators, and mitigates fluctuations in temperature, humidity, and radiation (Emerson 1939(Emerson , 1956Noirot and Darlington 2000). It is the cooperatively built environment, particularly in the more derived termite groups, that allows for extremes of miniaturization and vulnerability of the individuals within it.…”

Section: Social Behavior Allows Benefits To Outweigh Costsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Body Size and Termite Evolution

Nalepa

2011

Evol Biol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Termites are a monophyletic lineage within the paraphyletic Blattaria, with xylophagous cockroaches in the genus Cryptocercus as sister group. Given this ancestry, termite divergence involved a substantial leap in body plans, as they are pale, fragile, and miniaturized relative to most cockroaches. Here I suggest that the evolutionary transition to an altricial morphotype in termites is grounded in the economics of utilizing a wood diet, and occurred via a series of sequential steps associated with modifications in social behavior. The chief benefit of an altricial morphotype is suggested to be nitrogen made available by decreasing individual body size and by dispensing with a heavy, melanized cuticle. The primary costs lie in increased vulnerability to environment hazards, including predators, pathogens, and desiccation. Termites tipped the evolutionary scale via cooperative behaviors that mitigate the cost or amplify the benefit of a small, fragile morphotype, and were present in rudimentary form in their cockroach relatives. These include building behavior, cooperative feeding, allogrooming, and most notably, trophallaxis. It was the directed circulation of nitrogenous reserves via trophallactic feeding among units of the superorganism rather than their progressive storage in a large, heavily armored body that was the foundation of termite evolutionary success.

show abstract

Section: Social Behavior Allows Benefits To Outweigh Costsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A termite is more vulnerable to cannibalism because it is soft, and more palatable to nest mates because it is digestible. Consequently, cannibalism has become a potent mechanism of caste regulation and nitrogen redistribution in the isopteran superorganism (Emerson 1939;Waller and LaFage 1987;Sennepin 1998).…”

Section: Nitrogenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Body Size and Termite Evolution

Nalepa

2011

Evol Biol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The theory and empirical work on this subject have shown that there are economies of scale related to energy use such that cells in larger, more complex animals require less energy per capita. For eusocial colonies, it has long been posited that these "superorganisms" experience similar relationships with colony size (3,(9)(10)(11)(12), perhaps owing to shared constraints on the delivery of energy and materials (e.g., branching distribution networks, space-filling surface area to volume constraints) (e.g., see refs. [13][14][15][16].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Energetic basis of colonial living in social insects

Hou

Kaspari

Zanden

et al. 2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

119

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Understanding the ecology and evolution of insect societies requires greater knowledge of how sociality affects the performance of whole colonies. Metabolic scaling theory, based largely on the body mass scaling of metabolic rate, has successfully predicted many aspects of the physiology and life history of individual (or unitary) organisms. Here we show, using a diverse set of social insect species, that this same theory predicts the size dependence of basic features of the physiology (i.e., metabolic rate, reproductive allocation) and life history (i.e., survival, growth, and reproduction) of whole colonies. The similarity in the size dependence of these features in unitary organisms and whole colonies points to commonalities in functional organization. Thus, it raises an important question of how such evolutionary convergence could arise through the process of natural selection.allometry | colony | scaling | metabolism | metabolic theory of ecology M ulticellularity and sociality represent two of life's major evolutionary innovations (1). Both are examples of how individual modules-cells and individuals-can cooperate to enhance evolutionary fitness. In the case of multicellularity, the emergence of such cooperation is relatively easy to explain in the context of natural selection given that all cells are governed by a single, shared genome. Sociality in general, and altruism in particular, is more difficult to explain in this context given that social groups often consist of multiple genotypes with varying degrees of genetic relatedness. In particular, understanding the cooperation observed in eusocial insects-ants, bees, wasps, and termites whose workers forgo reproduction to care for the young of their queens-has presented a paradox given the potential for genetic conflicts to cooperation. However, combining Hamilton's concept of inclusive fitness (2) with the genetics of haplodiploidy has gone some way toward resolving this apparent paradox in the evolution of eusociality (3).However, simply because cooperation among multicellular individuals or members of eusocial colonies can arise through natural selection does not mean it will endure in nature. For this, we must better understand how cooperation affects the collective performance of those in the group. One key metric of performance is an organism's ability to harvest, store, and transform energy to produce offspring (4). As Boltzmann (1905, cited in ref.5, p. 6) pointed out, "[The] struggle for existence is a struggle for free energy available for work," and Lotka (6) wrote, "In the struggle for existence, the advantage must go to those organisms whose energy-capturing devices are most efficient in directing available energy into channels favorable to the preservation of the species." For multicellular organisms, metabolic scaling theory has helped to quantify how changes in body size affect the energy use of species (7,8). The theory and empirical work on this subject have shown that there are economies of scale related to energy use such that cells...

show abstract

“…This concept was also applied to levels of organization other than the individual organism, as did Clements (1916) in his concept of a plant community as an organism. But, too often, application of this concept has suffered from general misunderstanding of proper use of analogy and metaphor in biological explanation (Wheeler, 1911;Emerson, 1939;Clements, 1916). Our notion that an "environmental system" is associated with each organismic system is evident in the thinking of some organismal biologists (Haldane, 1913;von Uexkull, 1909).…”

Section: Framework Elements In Biologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual frameworks and the philosophical foundations of general living systems theory

1979

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The continued expansion and fragmentation of biological disciplines impede education, communication, and efficient advance of biological research. Reversing these trends may require a unification of theories and concepts from all levels of biological organization. One form of this unification is the statement of generalizations that apply to all living systems. We explore the philosophical foundations of general theories of living systems by analyzing conceptual frameworks as they apply to biology. This analysis examines the relation of empirical observation, theories, and conceptual frameworks within the context of an individual scientist's conceptual continuum. Also presented are a small set of translevel generalizations that articulate our conceptual framework of living systems in terms of organismic system organization, the environmental system-organismic system dyad, system capacity, and system incorporation. A set of procedural rules are stated which suggest minimum criteria for the evaluation of the explanatory adequacy of biological theories. The relation of this work to other similar analyses and syntheses of biological knowledge is discussed.

show abstract

Social Coordination and the Superorganism

Cited by 111 publications

References 56 publications

Body Size and Termite Evolution

Body Size and Termite Evolution

Energetic basis of colonial living in social insects

Conceptual frameworks and the philosophical foundations of general living systems theory

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About