Biologists Take Evolution Beyond Darwin -- Way Beyond

Biologists Take Evolution Beyond Darwin -- Way Beyond : until recently, scientists thought the division of labor had a genetic basis, but after scientists sequenced the honeybee genome, they couldn't find a trigger. Hyper-specialization seems to be an emergent property of the collective. "That's a specific example of how a new pattern can be thrown into play," Amdam said. "You have an ordinary life cycle in an individual, but in a social context it's exploited by the colony." The superorganism is still shaped by mutation and natural selection, but only recently have biologists, accustomed to thinking of evolution at the individual level, applied the superorganism concept to insects. It may very well have even broader applications. "Man is the one who's undergoing this incredible evolution now," Woese said. "We see some in the insects, but the social processes by which man is evolving are creating a whole new level of organization." But as with bacteria and people, how can a sharp distinction be drawn between a honeybee colony and the flowers that both nourish them and rely on them for pollination? And between the flowers and organisms that in turn rely upon them? "Selection probably happens at all scales, from gene to individual to species to collection of species to ecosystem to we don't even know what," said Maya Paczuski, head of the Complexity Science Group at the University of Calgary.