Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T13:16:12.750Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The similarity and difference between ant and human ultrasocieties: From the viewpoint of scaling laws

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2016

Chen Hou
Chen Hou*
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Sciences, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO 65409. [email protected]://web.mst.edu/~houch/
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Complementary to Gowdy & Krall's comparison between ants and humans, I use economy scaling laws to discuss the similarity and difference between them quantitatively. I hypothesize that individual variations in society result in higher energetic efficiency in larger groups, and that the difference in the sustainability between these species originates from the driving forces of growth with different scaling powers.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e101
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bettencourt, L. M. A., Lobo, J., Helbing, D., Kuhnert, C. & West, G. B. (2007) Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104(17):7301–306.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bettencourt, L. M. A. & West, G. (2010) A unified theory of urban living. Nature 467:912–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cao, T. T. & Dornhaus, A. (2013) Larger laboratory colonies consume proportionally less energy and have lower per capita brood production in Temnothorax ants. Insectes Sociaux 60(1):1–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hou, C., Kaspari, M., Vander Zanden, H. B. & Gillooly, J. F. (2010) Energetic basis of colonial living in social insects. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107(8):3634–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pinter-Wollman, N., Wollman, R., Guetz, A., Holmes, S. & Gordon, D. M. (2011) The effect of individual variation on the structure and function of interaction networks in harvester ants. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 8:1562–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Price, T. D. (1995) Social inequality at the origins of agriculture. In: Foundations of social inequality. Fundamental issues in archaeology, ed. Price, T. D. & Feinman, G., pp. 129–51. Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shik, J. Z., Hou, C., Kay, A., Kasari, M. & Gillooly, J. F. (2012) Towards a general life-history model of the superorganism: Predicting the survival, growth and reproduction of ant societies. Biology Letters 8(6):1059–62. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2012.0463.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Waters, J. S., Holbrook, C. T., Fewell, J. H. & Harrison, J. F. (2010) Allometric scaling of metabolism, growth, and activity in whole colonies of the seed-harvester ant Pogonomyrmex californicus . The American Naturalist 176(4):501–10.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed