Emergent collective behavior evolves more rapidly than individual behavior among acorn ant species.

ABSTRACT: Emergence is a fundamental concept in biology and other disciplines, but whether emergent phenotypes evolve similarly to nonemergent phenotypes is unclear. The hypothesized process of emergent evolution posits that evolutionary change in at least some collective behaviors will differ from evolutionary change in the corresponding intrinsic behaviors of isolated individuals. As a result, collective behavior might evolve more rapidly and diversify more between populations compared to individual behavior. To test whether collective behavior evolves emergently, we conducted a large comparative study using 22 ant species and gathered over 1,500 behavioral rhythm time series from hundreds of colonies and isolated individuals, totaling over 1.5 y of behavioral data. We show that analogous traits m

SUBMITTER: Doering GN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11621464 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature