NBB 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Philopatry, Nepotism, Multicellular Organism
3 Mar 2019
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Document Summary
Reproductive suppression: discovered so far in. Doesn"t require a big brain or complex society: cooperation facilitates adaptability. Cooperative breeders are more successful at colonizing harsh environments but are nonetheless rare relative to less cooperative social strategies. Adapt and colonize harsh environments: cooperation is key to the emergence of social complexity. Eusociality - cooperative childcare, overlapping generations, reproductive division of labor. Ants - can"t reproduce, helps the queen ant: ant biomass is greater than half of all insects and all terrestrial vertebrates. Eusociality is incredibly successful but also incredibly rare (3%: cooperation drives the evolution of biological complexity. Queen ant - gamete, other ants - somatic cells analogy. Species of green algae - somatic cells help gamete cells (colony), other species that compete as individual cells. Multicellularity has many advantages, but most of life on earth is unicellular: cooperative behavior is central to major transitions in the history of life, cooperation facilitates rare phenomena - emergence of new biological entities.
