The Ecology of Collective Behavior Quotes

“The dynamics of collective behavior are generated by how individuals interact to adjust collective outcomes to changing conditions. Selection for collective behavior is selection on individuals for how they interact to contribute to collective outcomes. Evolution shapes individual participation because of the ecological consequences of the collective outcomes for the individuals.”
― Deborah M Gordon, The Ecology of Collective Behavior

“When we can describe how patterns of encounters among individuals adjust outcomes in changing situations, we have explained collective behavior and it is no longer emergent. Then we can move past emergence to explanations, and abandon the idea that collective behavior is added on top of individual behavior to create something extra”
― Deborah M Gordon, The Ecology of Collective Behavior

“Although some animals are considered to be solitary rather than group-living, they can also be considered to engage in collective behavior. Even the state of aloneness is itself a relation with others. We know this from our own behavior. People who are alone are not removed from the social fabric; avoidance is a form of relation, and the use of language, even in solitude, is a social activity.”
― Deborah M Gordon, The Ecology of Collective Behavior

“Function in brain networks depends on the modularity and strength of interactions. Activity within a module is faster than across a widespread network because there is no need for the signal to travel long distances, and strong connections work faster than weaker, dif- fuse ones. Danielle Bassett and her colleagues showed that perception of visual cues and the response to new events that capture attention arise from strong, localized connections, which easily facilitate change in the activity of nearby nodes. By contrast, learning and cognition are associated with low modularity in the form of weak, long-distance connections. One outcome is that we see faster than we think.”
― Deborah M Gordon, The Ecology of Collective Behavior

“Regions of the brain differ in how tightly function is linked to particular cells. For cognitive tasks, f MRI tests on different people, or on the same people at different times, often show that particular functions are performed by groups of neurons but that the locations change; thus, the neurons engaged in cognitive tasks tend to be scattered across the brain.41 Differences in the fidelity of neurons to par- ticular tasks depend on function; the activity of particular neurons varies more for cognitive functions than for more ancestral functions such as vision and olfaction.42 Thus, neurons, like ants, switch tasks or functions, and interactions among groups of neurons regulate their activity.”
― Deborah M Gordon, The Ecology of Collective Behavior

“The causes of the ant’s behavior are woven into the relations link- ing the ant, the place it is searching, the other ants, the seeds, and the humidity in a web that widens as we learn more. This amounts to a more elaborate and detailed version of Aristotle’s idea that the animal is expressing its nature. The important point is that its nature is not inside it, but instead in how it reacts to and changes its situation.
The view of evolution outlined in this chapter is that the causes and heredity of traits, such as behavior, are generated by the relation of inside and outside, not contained in a packet of instructions carried inside. This perspective on the evolution of collective behavior is emerging in every field of biology and underlies the hypothesis that the dynamics of collective behavior reflect adaptation to the dynamics of the environment in which the behavior evolves. To summarize: The dynamics of collective behavior are generated by how individuals interact to adjust collective outcomes to changing conditions.”
― Deborah M Gordon, The Ecology of Collective Behavior

“Planarium is a small multicellular organism with an amazing capacity to regenerate; if cut into 200 pieces, it will grow 200 planaria. Its capacity is not limitless: if cut into more than about 250 pieces, each piece is smaller than the minimum module of interactions among cells needed to stimulate regeneration. It is likely that species differences in the capacity to regenerate are associated with the frequency and risk of local damage.”
― Deborah M Gordon, The Ecology of Collective Behavior

“Though many early models of collective behavior sought to reveal common, basic principles that would lead to a single general theory of collective behavior, emergence, or self-organization, it is now clear that the processes that generate collective behavior are very diverse. By now many different models have been developed to de- scribe the myriad processes in nature that use interactions to generate collective outcomes.”
― Deborah M Gordon, The Ecology of Collective Behavior

“The “modern synthesis” in evolutionary biology brought the tools of population genetics to track the process of natural selection; now the “extended synthesis” adds the insight that organism and environment influence each other.”
― Deborah M Gordon, The Ecology of Collective Behavior