hmm. i wonder if while those ants don't enforce borders, whether they have castes and leaders. some of those queen ants, if i recall, are pretty greedy---only they get to f-k. some ants are pretty interesting (eg in the fact that sometimes they can 'morph' into different castes, so like in the USA, they have social mobility and you can be horatio alger hiss and do the macroshaft thing too). the idea that is 'new' also might need a proviso---just because this post has not, due to the speed of light being finite, reached alpha centuri yet so they have perfect information and can buy and sell accordingly, doesn't mean when they do get the 411 that its new. (its like baby steps and youth problems----man, that sh-t was discovered and solved long ago). these new argumentsd about cooperation remind of the new arguments that classical general equilibrium theory, it turns out, is neither complete, stable, or 100% accurate reflection of reality because it neglects things like information (tell that to debreu and arrow, who authored a prominent vbariant thereof, and pointed it out at about the same time), or that GDP isnt aint exactly useful (though gross). but, sh-t, if i discover the internet (around 95) i can write story, get some buzz, and be reely popular. who will ever remember yesterday?
--- On Wed, 9/9/09, Robert Naiman <[email protected]> wrote: From: Robert Naiman <[email protected]> Subject: [Pen-l] Unicolonial Ants Pose Challenge to "Selfish Gene" Theory To: "Progressive Economics" <[email protected]> Date: Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 8:46 AM It has been a mainstay of evolutionary theory since the 1970s. Natural selection acts purely on the level of the individual and any cooperation observed between organisms merely hides a selfish genetic motive. There have been two pioneering theories to explain cooperation in the natural world given this framework: the first was William Hamilton's (1964) theory of kin selection and the second was Robert Trivers' (1971) theory of reciprocal altruism. However, both of these scenarios break down where it comes to unicolonial ants. In a paper in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution (subscription required) Heikki Helantera, of the University of Sussex, and colleagues at Rice University have investigated how previous theories to explain cooperation don't apply for these unique supercolonies. Unicolonial ants carry polydomy [multiple nests in a supercolony that all individuals rotate through] and polygyny [multiple queens in one nest] to extremes. Colonies are huge, each being a network of hundreds or thousands of nests, each with multiple queens. There is no worker aggression, and there is free movement among nests on a vast scale. The energy that might have been put into fighting and territoriality flows into the common good, more ants. Such a concept, a form of genuine anarchism in the animal world, was thought to be impossible given existing theory. These ants live in colonies where relatives exist but, with so much migration throughout a network stretching thousands of kilometers, each ant worker is mostly surrounded by total strangers that share none of their genes. Only one other species has ever been known to organize themselves in such a fashion (and if you're reading these words right now you know who you are). http://scienceblogs.com/primatediaries/2009/09/unicolonial_ants_pose_challeng.php?utm_source=nytwidget -- Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org [email protected] Senator Feingold Calls for Timetable for U.S. Troop Withdrawal from Afghanistan http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/exit-afghanistan _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
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