Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
5
h e Phenotypic Architecture
of Pollen Hoarding
In Chapter 2, I introduced the stone-soup model of how social organi-
zation with division of labor arises from the simple mechanism of indi-
viduals responding to stimuli in their environment, changing the stim-
uli through their actions, and thereby af ecting the behavior of
nestmates. I called this the “spirit of the hive,” an answer to Maurice
Maeterlinck's puzzle. In Chapter 3, I introduced genetic variation into
the pot, building some additional complexity into the stone soup and
changing the l avor. Chapter 4 showed how the polyandrous mating
system that gives rise to increased genetic variation could evolve and
links the mating behavior of the queen with the genetically diverse so-
cial environment that she produces through her egg gametes and the
sperm of her mates. In this chapter and Chapter 6, I will build a com-
plex network of genes and phenotypes, mapping behavioral, anatomi-
cal, physiological, developmental, and genetic mechanisms onto social
foraging behavior.
5.1 Levels of Biological Or ga ni za tion
How is complex social behavior organized with respect to the dif erent
levels of biological organization from which societies are built: genetic
regulatory systems, proteins, cell signaling, hormonal regulatory net-
works, developmental cascades, individual anatomy, morphology, and
behavior, and colony-level traits derived from the interactions of tens of
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