V. Life's Corporeal Evolution Develops, Encodes and Organizes Itself: An Earthtwinian Genesis Synthesis

5. Cooperative Member/Group Societies

Couzin, Iain, et al. Collective Memory and Spatial Sorting in Animal Groups. Journal of Theoretical Biology. 218/1, 2002. It is now possible to simulate in computer programs how fish schools and birds flocks maintain a self-organized coherence all the while individual members employ simple, local rules.

Crespi, Bernard. The Insectan Apes. Human Nature. 25/1, 2014. The Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, evolutionary and behavioral biologist (search) continues his wide ranging, comparative creature studies from invertebrates to primates and onto human psychologies. A scan of his publications page offers a unique array, with a special emphasis on autistic, Williams, and schizophrenic syndromes. As the Abstract notes, a common proclivity for progeny care can be elucidated across this expanse that seems to recur independently of whatever species and environment.

I present evidence that humans have evolved convergently to social insects with regard to a large suite of social, ecological, and reproductive phenotypes. Convergences between humans and social insects include: (1) groups with genetically and environmentally defined structures; (2) extensive divisions of labor; (3) specialization of a relatively restricted set of females for reproduction, with enhanced fertility; (4) extensive extramaternal care; (5) within-group food sharing; (6) generalized diets composed of high-nutrient-density food; (7) solicitous juveniles, but high rates of infanticide; (8) ecological dominance; (9) enhanced colonizing abilities; and (10) collective, cooperative decision-making. Most of these convergent phenotypic adaptations stem from reorganization of key life-history trade-offs due to behavioral, physiological, and life-historical specializations. (Abstract)

The main purpose of my research program is to use integrated genetic, behavioural, ecological and phylogenetic approaches to study the evolution of social and sexual systems across all levels in the hierarchy of life, from genes, to cells, to organisms, to social systems, and to the brain. (BCs CV website)

Croft, Darren, et al. Exploring Animal Social Networks. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. An animal behaviorist (Croft), physicist (Richard James), and behavioral ecologist (Jens Krause) from the Universities of Wales, Bath, and Leeds, provide one of the first volumes on the realization that animal species of all scales and stripes are joined into dynamic relationships that can be well mathematically modeled. By way of social network analysis, scale-free and small world webs, and so on, a resonance is being found across Metazoans from fish and birds to pinnipeds and primates.

D’Ettorre, Patrizia and David P. Hughes. Sociobiology of Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Not yet seen, but via its web post a diverse collection across species from insects to primates, which involves many aspects from genes, chemical signals to gestures and education. A notable example is Language Unbound: Genomic Imprinting and Psychosis in the Origin and Evolution of Modern Humans by Bernard Crespi.

Daniels, Byron, et al. Introduction to the Special Issue: Quantifying Collectivity. Theory in Biosciences. November, 2021. BD and Manfred Laubichler, ASU and Jessica Flack, SFI collect and survey past papers such as Informational Architecture across Non-living and Living Collectives by Hyunju Kim, et al and Tempos and Modes of Collectivity in the History of Life by Douglas Erwin.

Biological systems are diverse, ranging from tightly packed, highly integrated, many-body systems like eukaryotic cells to decentralized microbial biofilms, to relatively small primate groups with on the order of 100 behaviorally flexible individuals all the way to large, complex societies (both insects and human) and ecosystems. This range suggests there is variation in both how collective a system is as well as how it is collective.

De Waal, Frans. How Animals do Business. Scientific American. April, 2005. A leading investigator of primate culture (aka monkey business) provides evolutionary roots for the new field of behavioral economics, which contends that market studies need to include human social psychology in its equations. From fish to chimpanzee, animals can be seen to similarly trade grooming, food items, reciprocity and so on.

De Waal, Frans. The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society. New York: Harmony Books, 2009. The Emory University primatologist was inspired to write his latest book by President Barack Obama’s college campus evocations for a more caring, helping, emphatic culture. In response, de Waal illustrates with copious cases an “other Darwinism” that can admit and include how pervasive cooperative behavior actually is, quite imperative for individual and group survival, not only for humans and primates groups but across Metazoan species from invertebrates to mammals. By such lights, a recurrent natural wisdom is revealed which people can avail for viable communities. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin advised, one might add, by the name of “creative union,” and traditional African “ubuntu” cultures whence a communal kinship actually will enhance one personal liberty.

De Waal, Franz and Peter Tyack, eds. Animal Social Complexity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. An extensive volume which presents evidence that cultural qualities are not unique to humans, as long thought, but are common throughout avian, cetacean, and primate societies. As a result, relative and appropriate degrees of intelligence, behavior and communicative transmission are found to exist throughout the animal kingdom.

Deutsch, Andreas, et al. Collective Motion in Biological Systems. Interface Focus. 2/689, 2012. Online October, with Guy Theraulaz and Tamas Vicsek, an Introduction to an issue on pervasive nonlinear dynamics that grace and propel animal assemblies. Pithy papers are “Schools of Fish and Flocks of Birds: Their Shape and Internal Structure by Self-Organization” by Charlotte Hemelrijk and Hanno Hildenbrandt, and “The Modelling Cycle for Collective Animal Behaviour” by David Sumpter, et al. A broad survey of sophisticated collaborative findings that serve to reveal nature’s universality across many kingdoms and scales.

One of the conspicuous features of life is the persistent motion of creatures. Thus, the spectrum of biological systems exhibiting group motion is wide and includes cases such as bacteria colonies, migrating locusts, schools of fish, flocks of birds, groups of mammals (including people) and so on. Each system has its specific features and motion patterns, but, as statistical physics teaches us, if a system is made of many similar, interacting units, then some relevant, universal behaviours are expected to take place as well, in this way bridging the gap between the aforementioned examples and making the studies of collective motion a sub-field (within collective behaviour) on its own right. What are these ‘universal’ features? It turns out that the motion of, for example, fish schools or flocking birds share a lot in common. (Abstract)

Deutsch, Andreas, et al. Multi-scale Analysis and Modelling of Collective Migration in Biological Systems. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. July, 2020. Senior complexity scientists AD, Technical University Dresden, Peter Friedl, Radboud University, Luigi Preziosi, Polytechnic University of Torino, and Guy Theraulaz, University of Toulouse introduce a special issue with this title. A full page graphic (second quote) depicts ten examples from neural maturation to cellular, insect, fish, bird and mammalian activities whence the same patterns and processes occur across this wide expanse. Some papers herein are An Agent-based Approach for Modelling Collective Dynamics in Animal Groups, Collective Migration during Early Development of Zebrafish, Collective Migration from the Wildebeest to the Neural Crest (search Shellard), Dynamic Heterogenity during Epithelial Wound Closure, and Collective Information Processing in Human Phase Separation (Jayles). As its 125 references span the 21st century, this 2020 synopsis can report the presence of an independent, mathematical source code program which universally iterates and exemplifies in vital kind everywhere. In regard, as a pandemic and other perils rage, we would do well to realize that an actual ecosmos uniVerse in our cognitive midst that is just being discovered by our worldwise EarthKinder.

Collective migration has become a paradigm for emergent, coherent behaviour in systems of moving and interacting individual units. Collective cell migration is important in embryonic tissue and organ development, as well as pathological processes, such as cancer invasion and metastasis. Animal group movements enhance individuals' decisions and aid navigation through environments. The articles in this theme issue on compile a range of mathematical models and multi-scale methods for the analysis of collective migration which uncover new unifying organization principles of collective behavior from individual to collective forms. As a common theme, self-organized collective migration is the result of ecological and evolutionary constraints both at the cell and organismic levels. (Abstract excerpt)

Figure 1, Collective migration in biological systems. (a) Collectively migrating neural crest cells in Xenopus embryos; (b) E-cadherin negative MMT cells invading three-dimensional fibrillar collagen; (c) collective migration of cancer cells in vitro (d) electronmicrograph showing the aggregate formed by seven sperm cells of the dear moue; (e) collective migration and aggregation by chemotaxis in the social amoeba;(f) a colony of termites on a march; (g) a migratory swarm of locusts; (h) a school of bigeye trevally Caranx sexfasciatus; (i) a flock of greater snow goose; (j) the great wildebeest migration in the Serengeti National Park.

Dombrovski, Mark, et al. Cooperative Behavior Emerges among Drosophila Larvae. Current Biology. 27/2821, 2017. A nine University of Virginia biologists and computer analysts proceed to show how even larval stages of these fruit flies are moved by innate tendencies to form beneficial social groupings. If to compare with Westley, et al, 2018 herein, recent studies seem to altogether portend a universal, independent source which serves to guide life’s every phase from nucleotides and bacteria to all manner of organisms in community.

Spectacular examples of cooperative behavior emerge among a variety of animals. However, the rules governing such behavior have been difficult to elucidate. Drosophila larvae are known to socially aggregate and use vision, mechanosensation, and gustation to recognize each other. We describe here a model experimental system of cooperative behavior involving Drosophila larvae. While foraging in liquid food, larvae are observed to align themselves and coordinate their movements in order to drag a common air cavity and dig deeper. Large-scale cooperation is required to maintain contiguous air contact across the posterior breathing spiracles. (Abstract excerpt)

Dugatkin, Lee. Cooperation Among Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. A notable contribution on the primacy of altruistic behavior in evolution.

Previous   1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10  Next  [More Pages]