ICCS06/E.O. Wilson

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[edit] Edward O. Wilson

ICCS Presentation Title: New Understanding in Social Evolution

The evolution of caste systems among the 12,000 known species of ants can be explained as a simple adjustment by colony-level natural selection in three parameters: the timing of decision points that lead to different lengths of larval growth; allometry (relative growth rates) of the imaginal disks during adult development; and size-dependent longevity of the resulting adults. The result is adaptive demography, an emergent colony-level property.

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Pellegrino Research Professor in Entomology
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
Harvard University

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