The Social Amoebae: The Biology of Cellular Slime Molds

by John Tyler Bonner

Noted biologist and author John Tyler Bonner has experimented with cellular slime molds for more than sixty years, and he has done more than anyone else to raise these peculiar collections of amoebae from a minor biological curiosity to a major model organism--one that is widely studied for clues to the development and evolution of all living things. Now, five decades after he published his first pioneering book on cellular slime molds, Bonner steps back from the proliferating and increasingly specialized knowledge about the organism to provide a broad, nontechnical picture of its whole biology, including its evolution, sociobiology, ecology, behavior, and development. The Social Amoebae draws the big lessons from decades of research, and shows how slime molds fit into and illuminate biology as a whole.


Slime molds are very different from other organisms; they feed as individual amoebae before coming together to form a multicellular organism that has a remarkable ability to move and orient itself in its environment. Furthermore, these social amoebae display a sophisticated division of labor; within each organism, some cells form the stalk and others become the spores that will seed the next generation. In The Social Amoebae , Bonner examines all these parts together, giving a balanced, concise, and clear overview of slime mold biology, from molecules to cells to multicells, as he advances some unconventional and unexpected insights.

Genres: Biology, Science, Nonfiction, Nature, Natural History

152 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

John Tyler Bonner is the George M. Moffett Professor Emeritus of Biology at Princeton University, a pioneer in the use of cellular slime molds to understand evolution and development, and one of the world's leading experts on cellular slime molds.

Reviews

[Alex Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just read John Bonner's Social Amoebae in a quick few sittings. It's bout how cellular slime molds sense the world and orient themselves and navigate, and how the roll of each cell is determined. It's pretty Meta, and self referential. And very specific without explaining its orientation in the big picture. It starts in a specialised place without really explaining what a cellular slime mold is, so throughout I often wondered. Wait. What are we even talking about? Are cellular slime molds different from myxomycetes? He promises in the first few pages to leave out jargon, but I don't believe he tried to do this anywhere in the book. I can see why I put this down 10 years ago with my bookmark on page 3, but now am enjoying learning about amoeba movement and sensory experiences and thinking about how old white scientists talk. It's like he feels he is not allowed to marvel at his subject so instead marvels at the genius of his own experiments and his peers and spends too much ink arguing who should be credited for learning each minute detail.

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a lovely little book on cellular slime molds, some of which have become model organisms for studies of social evolution and the origin of multicellularity—they are much easier to perform experiments on than ants and bees, for obvious reasons. The aim of the book is to give a concise overview of all aspects of the biology of slime molds, and it certainly achieves this aim. For those primarily interested in evolutionary questions, and especially questions of social evolution and the origin of multicellularity, you should look elsewhere—Bonner only spends a few paragraphs on the former, and doesn't even note the relevance of slime molds for understanding the latter. That said, you can read the book in an hour or two and thereby be in a position to dive into the more specialised literature on whatever topic you're interested in.

[Benji · Rating 4 out of 5]

“One thing that may happen in all of developmental—or life cycle—biology is the increasing role of mathematics. At the moment we keep burrowing and finding more and more key genes and follow their often tortuous pathways to discrete developmental events. In other words, we can expect more and more details and an accumulation of concrete facts. This is absolutely necessary and definitely should be cheered forward, but it is not enough. These are the bricks that compose the mansion, but a far more profound question is, what is the nature of the architect and how are the vast assembly of genes and the substances they spawn orchestrated. There must be some sort of master plan that has been carefully built up over millions of years, for otherwise all the facts we are accumulating would not produce a slime mold, but only chaos.
We must turn that jungle into the simplicity that gives us the feeling that we are making scientific progress. And clearly one way—perhaps the only way—we can achieve this is through mathematical insight. The example we might look to for the future to understand the causal mechanisms in the development and evolution of cellular slime molds might be found in ecology.
There too, in earlier days, was an overabundance of facts that needed to be put into some sort of order. Demystifying that (literal) jungle has been one of the great successes of modern biology. This was in large part achieved through the genius of Robert MacArthur, who, with simple mathematics, was able to bring to light underlying principles that unify all the overwhelming details. To give one example among his many successes he, with E. O. Wilson, illuminated the principles of island biogeography in a big flash by showing that a finite set of key factors—such as island size, distance from the mainland, rates of immigration and emigration, and so forth—were sufficient to account for what is actually found on islands.

The day may come (if it is not already here) where we may hail Turing, along with his other claims to fame, as the MacArthur of developmental biology.”

[Stark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great layman’s overview of the current state of knowledge on slime molds, as well as the history of the amazing developments in science that got us there. Slime molds are my favorite animal, because of the fascinating snapshot they provide into the process of cells learning to cooperate on the way to becoming multicellular organisms. It also contains the sickest burn on “intelligent design” I’ve ever seen: “rational explanations are ruled impossible *before even looking for them*”. Facebook has taken to serving me multiple ads from pseudoscientific creationist orgs, because I post a lot about science, this has been on my mind. They fucking disgust me. Insistence that the sky daddy your weak ass relies on to provide you with a false sense of security and importance shat all this into existence is a sniveling denial of the dizzying wondrousness of actual reality.

[Diane Henry · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful intro to slime molds! Largely accessible!

[Luke D · Rating 5 out of 5]

YES !!!! amazing for a layperson - keep encyclopedia of biology at hand for definitions

10/10, loved it - a page turner actually (not sarcasm)

[Arushi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coolest book I have read in a while

[J Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Bonner's enthusiasm for his "beloved" slime molds is apparent on every page. The Social Amoebae is a compact 125+ pages, and is written in an approachable and entertaining style. Dr. Bonner provides a nice background, the life cycle, evolution, and ecology of slim molds. He provides updates on the state-of-study in this area, and does so with approachable/understandable prose.

One sentence jumped of the page in Chapter 5 "Behavior": If a result is greeted with disbelief, or even scorn by the outside world, there is a good chance that it is not only true, but important."

This little book was a pleasure to read and highly recommended.

[Anja · Rating 4 out of 5]

makes you want to study slime molds for a living

[Eoin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This should have been a concise, 10-page article. Instead it's a point against the scientists in the eternal battle of scientists-versus-writers-writing-science. This is an enthusiastic but woefully unedited ramble by a slime mold expert.

[Joshua Brader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does an amazing job of describing how a person could spend an entire career studying a usually single-celled organism called a "slime mold." This really belongs with other "popular" science books by people like Carl Sagan and William Beebe

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt like I was reading a scientific paper where the language was a bit easier to understand. For some reason I was expecting more interesting stories about peculiar slime molds, even though that's clearly not what the book description says the book is about.

[Tracy Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very short but enjoyable read. I wish there was a similar book on plasmodial slime molds, though as it turns out, the cellular slime molds are every bit as interesting.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want a passionately written book on social amoeba (and you should) this is the book to read.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts off very interesting, particularly if you know nothing about slime moulds, but it soon feels too brief and I was left unsatisfied by the lack of detail.

[Elentarri · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Social Amoebae: The Biology of Cellular Slime Molds Rather short book about cellular slime molds.