Comments on: Mathematical support for insect colonies as superorganisms

By: More than Honey » Blog Archive » Reading about the Superorganism

More than Honey » Blog Archive » Reading about the Superorganism — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:12:18 +0000

[...] Also, by the way, Ed Yong reports some compelling Mathematical Support for Insect Colonies as Superorganisms. [...]

By: Jeremy Lent

Jeremy Lent — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:34:12 +0000

This is an interesting and powerful validation of the evolutionary theory of Alfred J. Lotka who wrote in 1922 that “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.”
Lotka called this the “fourth law of thermodynamics” and went on to apply the theory to human cultural evolution, describing the role of culture “to accelerate the circulation of matter through the life cycle, both by ‘enlarging the wheel,’ and by causing it to ‘spin faster.’

By: Dallas Krentzel

Dallas Krentzel — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:54:22 +0000

You may be interested to know that there was a recent paper that came out that questions the validity of the 3/4's law: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100203101124.htm

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:25:50 +0000

To elaborate further, PNAS often has substantial gaps between embargo lift and publication. Can be less than a day. Can be more than a fortnight.

By: Brent

Brent — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:27:36 +0000

Sorry – I’m too stupid to figure that clue out. If we are talking Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (which I assume we are), the DOI still does not resolve, and the paper does not appear on the website, either as a published article, or in the early edition (my previous experience is that it appears there at the time of embargo lifting… just gets its page numbers later).

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:50:29 +0000

Yes. PNAS is the clue.

By: Brent

Brent — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:48:05 +0000

Er… 14 days later and the article is still not apparently published by PNAS… any clues?

By: Scilogue

Scilogue — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:15:47 +0000

Very interesting indeed, this makes me wonder about mega cities and efficiency of human life. Could we, for instance, form social institutions that function as sepcific “organs” of the mega organism?

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:32:56 +0000

From the methods:

with colonies ranging in mass from ~0.0017 g for the ant Solenopsis morphospecies ditt…

0.0017g = 1.7mg right?

By: Emory Kimbrough

Emory Kimbrough — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:23:01 +0000

Very interesting post – thanks for writing this up.
One nitpick: “…fire ants whose colonies weigh little more than 2 milligrams…”
2 milligrams sounds like the weight of an individual ant, not the weight of an ant colony, even the lightest. Indeed the graph shows the lightest colonies at roughly a gram, not roughly a milligram.