Pulitzer Prize-winning author and biologist Bert Holldobler will present a public lecture on “The Superorganism: Communication and Cooperation in Ant Societies” in the CUB Auditorium on the WSU Pullman campus at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 3. The lecture is intended for the general public, and is free to all. After a brief intermission, Holldobler’s lecture will be followed by a screening of a 55-minute documentary, “Ants: Nature’s Secret Power.”
Ants are the best known example of a “superorganism,” a social organization that exhibits a type of distributed intelligence and in which many individual organisms of limited intelligence and information combine resources to accomplish goals beyond their individual capabilities.
In his talk, Holldobler will discuss research that expands our knowledge of superorganisms. Superorganisms are characterized by complex communication and division of labor and represent one of the basic stages of biological organization, midway between organism and species. The study of the superorganism has advanced our understanding of evolution and how life has progressed from simple to complex forms. Holldobler’s lecture offers a look into a part of the living world hitherto glimpsed by only a very few.