The Ecology of Collective Behavior

by Deborah M Gordon

A groundbreaking new perspective on collective behavior across biological systems

Collective behavior is everywhere in nature, from gene transcription and cancer cells to ant colonies and human societies. It operates without central control, using local interactions among participants to allow groups to adjust to changing conditions. The Ecology of Collective Behavior brings together ideas from evolutionary biology, network science, and dynamical systems to present an ecological approach to understanding how the interactions of individuals generate collective outcomes.

Deborah Gordon argues that the starting point for explaining how collective behavior works in any natural system is to consider how it changes in relation to the changing world around it. She shows how feedback use―the means by which networks of interactions operate―and the organization of interaction networks evolve to reflect the stability and demands of the environment. Ant colonies function collectively, and the enormous diversity of species in different habitats provides opportunities to look for general ecological patterns. Through an in-depth comparison of ant species, Gordon identifies broad trends in how the diversity of collective behavior in many other collective systems reflects the dynamics of the environment.

Shedding light on how individual actions give rise to group behavior, The Ecology of Collective Behavior explains the evolution of collective behavior through innovation in participant interactions, offering new insights into how collective responses function in changing conditions.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biology, Nature

184 pages, Hardcover

Published October 24, 2023

Reviews

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In living systems, unlike physical ones, change goes both ways: change in any living system alters its surroundings, which in turn change the living system. Newton’s laws describe how an object changes position when it is subject to certain forces. These laws for inanimate objects are deterministic; the relation of mass and acceleration is sufficient to predict how an object will move, and the surroundings are independent of the action of the objects. This is never true in living systems; instead, every living entity is busy modifying its surroundings."

This is written clearly as a primer in an approach to understanding life - or biology - that Gordon has been part of pioneering. Rather than viewing elements of life in isolation, she argues, we should understand it as part of a living system. Whether you are discussing cells, individuals or species, each is shaped by their interactions and can only be understood in the context of them. Gordon eschews a more philosophical approach, however, if favour of mapping distinct ways that interaction occurs and the impacts it can have, for example, centering around how resource fluctuations affect ant behaviour (Gordon is an ant specialist; there are a lot of ant examples) or how modal networks will differ in interaction mechanics to hierarchical ones. She also focuses almost entirely on her case, declining to allocate space to debunking other approaches. The result is surprisingly accessible, and if, like me, you are already inclined to be in agreement with this more collective and dazzlingly intricate view of evolution, it provides sensible ways to think about it and some good examples of how interactions might work.
I also did like that she had moved from being an emergence enthusiast to being "ready to replace its mystical glow with something more substantial". She uses an iceberg analogy as if we can currently see only what is above the waterline, the emergent behaviour, but that doesn't mean that the process underneath is mystical, just not what we can really yet see. "let’s figure out how to explain collective behaviour, and then there will be no need to invoke emergence." This book is a long way from that - and criticism could be that there are oversimplifications here too - but it is a step towards thinking differently to approach the problem.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Geared toward fellow researchers and scientists, but written in a very readable way. The diagrams were more confusing than they were helpful, but the book builds to a grander conclusion about interconnectedness than I thought it would. Thought provoking and interesting if you like thinking about the interplay of the environment with the organism and the superorganism.

[Benji · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Perhaps soon there will be classes in cell behavior that return to the origins of cell biology—the observation of cells—in which students are asked to watch cells in action in their surroundings and come up with questions about their collective behavior.'