AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion

News & Events: Public Lecture

What Ants and Bees Tell Us about Social Networks
22 January 2004

 

The social insects, including the ants and bees, are one of the pinnacles of social evolution. Individual ant or bee workers are relatively simple, but the colony as a whole performs elaborate behaviors, including coordinated team foraging and construction of elaborate nests, all without central leadership. How is this accomplished? We are coming closer to answering this question as we begin to realize that social insect colonies are networks, where each individual’s behavior is influenced by the information they gather from others around them. These network connections, combined with relatively simple rules of behavior, produce complex behaviors at the group level (self-organization). We explore how these rules generate division of labor, where group members specialize on different tasks. Division of labor is considered perhaps the most important adaptation of the social insects, but we can use similar rules of self-organization to explain its appearance across social groups, from invertebrates to humans.

From molecules in cells to colonies of social insects, biology is rife with examples of scale-free or small world networks. We may be on the verge of a Kuhnian paradigm shift in the philosophy of biological science, since these networks suggest that the emergent properties of these systems are real and not epiphenomena. This turning away from the strictly reductionist view that has dominated science could open a real discussion of other potentially emergent issues, such as those associated with the relationships between physicality and consciousness and spirituality

Keynote speaker:

• Jennifer Fewell, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Biology, Arizona State University
  

Respondent:

• Martinez Hewlett, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Arizona

Coverage:

Listen to Dr. Jennifer Fewell
Listen to Dr. Martinez Hewlett
Read the Summary