As an analogy to human society, evolutionary biologists simply talk about the amazing ecology of "true social creatures" that build a so-called colonial, management-class society. "meaningful to ants who don't work" is republished in the Yamakai library. Why are there ants that don't work? This paper introduces the cooperation, betrayal, surprise, joys and sorrows in the beetle society-an interesting and intriguing "beetle way of life".
"all in all, the world is difficult to live in."
The Meiji era writer Natsume Shushi wrote at the beginning of the grass pillow: "if you work in wisdom, you will stand up." If you put it on a message, it will be washed away. If you insist, I will be very embarrassed. Generally speaking, it is difficult to live in the world. Why don't you stay? That is because the world is a "society with others".
In the workplace, the business plan, which takes a long time to prepare, makes the guests change their minds. Although I worked hard, my boss said to me, "work more." When I got home exhausted, my wife and daughter were waiting for "helping the family again" and "Dad's underwear and my clothes, don't wash them together."
After taking a bath, in order to drink beer, I opened the refrigerator and had no son to drink. I gently dropped my shoulder on the closed door and stuck a magnet to the notice inviting the director of the town council to do it. If you turn your attention to TV, you may miss your favorite tuna sashimi because of environmental problems.
If you live in a society like this, you will feel bored in the gap between the idea that you "want to do this" and the requirements of the society.
Would it be easy if there was no one in the world? If we can do whatever we want, will the stress we bear every day almost disappear?
If you think about it, you will soon understand why this imagination is just a dream. Because the existence of society is not only under pressure, but also brings great benefits to personal life.
If there are no people, it will be difficult for us to get daily food. Of course, the infrastructure that fundamentally supports our lives, such as electricity, tap water and gas, will also stop. Few people can survive in such a world.
It is impossible for human beings to survive without society.
A male who is regarded as troublesome
By the way, it is not just human beings that have a society. Among all kinds of creatures, as well as the tiny beetles crawling around there, there are groups that can only be called societies.
It is simply called "social" for creatures that move in groups (such as green plum fish), or "biological society" for various creatures such as African grasslands living in the same place, but biologically Only creatures with a more special group structure are called "true social creatures" and are distinguished from other groups.
As you know, many bees and ants live together with the queen as the center. They are individuals who specialize in reproduction and labor (workers). In the case of ants, workers) are the true social creatures that make up groups called colonies.
Since graduate school, I have been specializing in true social biology. Because they have a class in the individual (= society), the phenomenon becomes particularly complex and is a very interesting object of study.
According to the general principle of biological evolution, "individuals who have the nature of leaving a lot of children, because of their nature, increase the number of offspring, and finally, in the group, there are only things of that nature". "only by improving the chances of survival so that the next generation can pass on as many genes as possible, can we stay in the future."
However, workers of true social organisms do not have children in many cases, so they have evolved creatures of a nature that contradicts the right-hand rule of "increasing offspring". Why do such creatures exist?
The mystery was introduced by Charles Darwin, an advocate of evolution, in his book the Origin of species, as an example that may threaten his own theory of evolution. Because of this mystery, real social creatures have long been concerned by biologists.
Until the 1980s, true social organisms knew only bees, ants and termites, and later found in insect aphids that are fully related to bees, ants and termites, and more recently, companions of mice, shrimp and beetles It is understood that some of the mold's companions are also known as true social creatures.
In the classification of organisms, the collection of individuals that are considered to be the same is called species, the collection of multiple species that are considered to be close relatives is called genera, and the collection of individuals that collect several closely related genera is set as a hierarchical system such as families. The same level of hierarchy (species and genera) is called taxa. The social composition of social organisms is not only different from distant taxa such as bees and mice, but also different from species in similar taxa such as bees and ants.
Among bees and ants, there are usually only females in the ant colony (except for special circumstances, individuals with the ability to produce the next generation are regarded as females in this book). Worker bees and ants are female. The queen is also a female and there is no male king.
Some ants are very large, there is a large worker called "bingtuan ant", specializing in combat and limited work, of course, bingtuan ants are also female. The world of ants and bees is a complete female society.
In animations such as Orphan Hatch and Mitsubachi Maya Adventures, which take the world of bees as the stage, the janitor is a man, but there is no such thing.
Honeybee males only appear in a very short period of time for the new queen to mate and die soon after mating with the queen. The sperm received by the Queen at that time can continue to live in the body and has been used to fertilize eggs (orchids) throughout her long life.
Males, on the other hand, do not work at all in a short life of about a month. Act only for mating. Almost all wasps and male ants who die after a single mating are troublemakers from the point of view of maintaining society.
In English, male bees are named the Drone of "troublemakers" because many males who appear, do not work and consume nest honey will not bring any benefit to beekeepers.
The male does not work, the bee seems to be just a troublesome person past the mating period, when the new queen has completed a sufficient number of mating, the worker bee will no longer feed the male still in the nest, violently attacking it will be driven out of the nest.
The expelled males can only die in nothingness. For bees and ant queens, males are only necessary to receive sperm. It's a little complicated for a human man.
True social organisms also have a variety of social forms, but the characteristics of cooperation between breeding individuals and non-breeding individuals are common. Although there are no actions that are good for individuals who leave their own children, actions that assist other individuals to reproduce, known as "altruistic actions", distinguish true social organisms from other social organisms.
The uniqueness of disagreement.
Multiple classes work together to form the true social creatures of a colony, showing us the complexities that living alone do not have. This book attempts to answer many of the questions arising from it.
Creating a collective collaboration can lead to an impossible problem for a creature that lives alone, that is, "how to move a group better". Having said that, because they are beetles, they cannot have the art of intelligence, such as someone judging the overall situation and ordering the organization to operate smoothly.
Even if we observe the group behavior such as ants, there will be no individual judging the situation and driving the situation as a whole. Bees and ants have no command tower. In spite of this, the colonies of bees and ants shifted the appropriate labor to the necessary work and handled the work needed by the whole colony perfectly. How is the problem of "how to mobilize the collective" just now solved?
The basic life cycle of real social creatures is as follows. In the colony, the next generation of queens and males with excellent dispersion ability (most wings (wings)) appear, come out of the nest to mate, the queen is scattered to do it in a new nest, and the workers of the children are raised.
When workers grow up, they specialize in labor, grow larger colonies and create new queens and males.
In this real social creature, there must be individuals who exclusively have children and work as "queens" and "kings". On the other hand, in the biological world, there is a basic rule that "the more children are born, the easier its nature is to spread."
So why is it that the queen's children are not queens, but workers who do not have children, and generations can convey the nature of "working without children"? If you don't have children, this is a big biological problem, because its nature should not remain in the next generation.
In addition, to observe the ant nest, on the one hand, there are ants that have been working, on the other hand, there are ants that hardly work. So, compared with the ant that only works, is the ant who doesn't work just a lazy person? So, don't such ants need to be in the nest? What is the reason for such a thing?
In addition, in the real social creatures, the complex interests among the members resulting from the creation of society have given rise to interesting phenomena. Although it is a society, but because each member is an independent individual, so like human society, there are many inconsistencies between the interests of groups and individuals. What happens there is exactly the same as human society, with joys and sorrows such as cooperation, betrayal and advice. Everything from killing each other to war can happen.
In addition to these biological interests, many amazing behaviors can be seen in the creatures that create groups.
For example, when the worker bee rests on the hive, the little white bee queen is almost like "hurry up to work!" "I will attack you violently and ask you to get the food. But worker bees are also monkeys, leaving the nest and doing nothing behind the leaves farther away. Looks like a lazy salesperson in a coffee shop.
If you look at the society of beetles,
In this book, I introduce the ecology of social creatures and hope you enjoy that wonderful and sometimes humorous behavior.
People as creatures and part of beetles have something in common in owning society, but they are completely different creatures from physical structure to intellectual level. Social beetles are a sad behavior for human beings. "can this high degree of behavior really become a group of these beetles?" "from the complex collective actions that we want to talk about, to the amazing phenomena that can't be human beings, they all show a variety of ways of life.
Beetles live without considering others, but people learn a lot from the beetle's lifestyle.
In the first chapter, this book will see examples of collective behavior and the way workers work in beetle society. In chapter 2, we consider the effect of workers' personality on the maintenance of the organization. In chapter 3, we explain what they work for. In chapter 4, it still exists among cooperative individuals. In order to ensure the struggle of individual interests, in chapter 5, we also explain the importance of collective survival.
In the last chapter, we summarize the relationship between individual and society seen from the study of real social biology, as well as the significance of science in human society. The main purpose is to introduce the world of true social biology to beginners through this book.
This book is aimed at ordinary people, so it will not give an overly rigid professional description. People who know nothing about biology can easily read it after relaxing, and people who are interested in biology will think "Ah ~ that's right" after reading it.
The article also matches the purpose, so that I have a quite relaxed tone. At the end of each chapter, we will briefly review what we have learned in this chapter.
My academic field is evolutionary biology, which aims to figure out why (Why) and "how (How)" the properties shown by living things evolved. Evolutionary biology is not something like medical research that can immediately restore the results to society.
However, the study of social biology is a field with a large number of researchers in the field of evolutionary biology. I think it can be said that "the fact that many people are engaged in research shows the interest of true social creatures."
A true social creature attracted by many biology lovers. It would be great to introduce some of them if they can contribute a little to enrich the social life of the readers.
In part of this report, "it makes sense for ants that don't work".
The science book I want to read most in our time! The resumption of publication should be in a library. Evolutionary biologists describe the amazing ecology of ants as a metaphor for human society, which is easy to understand, profound and interesting.
"ants that don't work make sense" by Hasegawa Eiyou on sale: August 30, 2021 Price: 935 yen (including tax)
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[author's resume] Hasegawa Eiyou (Hasegawa ·Eisuke)
Evolutionary biologist. Associate professor, agricultural researcher, graduate school of Hokkaido university. The Animal Ecology Laboratory belongs to. Born in 1961. He began to study social insects when he was in college. After graduation, after working in a private enterprise for 5 years, he studied ecology at the Graduate School of Tokyo Metropolitan University. The main areas of research include social evolution and the behavior of animals that build groups. In particular, the study of Hattaraki Ali, who does not work, has attracted great attention. "ants that don't work makes sense" (a new book from the Media Factory) has become more than 200000 bestsellers.