The Superorganism (04/06/10)

Lecture by Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino Research Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology at Harvard

The study of insect societies is today one of the fastest growing major branches of evolutionary biology. It has revealed a great deal about the general principles of the origin and evolution of advanced social behavior, and has shed light on the enormous ecological success of the social insects (with ants and termites making up over half of the insect biomass around the world). The evolution from organism to superorganism has been the major transition between levels of biological organization, easiest to penetrate and understand.

The annual John M. Prather Lecture in Biology is organized by the departments of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology & Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard.