This book reads more like a college level textbook. Very dense and packed full of information.
( )

[The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies]
This was a fascinating book that is definitely in my top five for 2013. It was written by research scientists about the natural history of social insects and how they evolved. If you don't "believe" in evolution you will hate this book it is a constant theme in the book. I learned a lot. The book is mostly about ants with some about bees and a little about wasps. I call it my "Ant" book. Ants are incredible. It didn't seem that hard to read. I just accepted the facts that some of the bio-chemistry I didn't understand. I still got a lot out of it.
It's the size of a coffee table book with photos and drawings appropriate to that genre. There were about seventy photographs and each one of them was excellent. Many showed the insects as if you were looking at them under a low power microscope. A majority of the line drawings were done in a series of four to six drawings to illustrate specific behavior patterns discussed in the text. They were also used to focus on anatomical details such as glands inside the insects. I would enjoy going through to look at the pictures.

A superorganism is defined as a society such as an insect colony that possesses features of
organization analogous to the physiological properties of a single organism.

There are three basic behavioral mechanisms discussed that allow the ants to develop into a superorganism.
The first is altruism. The vast majority of the insects in the colony do not reproduce but instead spend their lives raising someone else's offspring. This runs contrary to the basic drive to reproduce. It is the first step down the evolutionary path to the development of a superorganism.
Altruism allows for the development of division of labor which allows some of the insects in the colony to function as a separate physiological process within the superorganism. Some of the insects do nothing but gather food for the colony. They bring in the food in a raw state and then another group of insects turn the raw food into something edible for the members of the colony. The foragers needs for shelter, food and protection are met by other specialized insects within the colony. In some species the division of labor changes as the needs of the colony change. If there is too much raw food some foragers may adopt another role necessary for the colony such as processing the food. The adoption of another role may require the insect to change some of their physical characteristics to those required by their new role. Often these changes are triggered by some method of communication between the individual insect and other members of the colony.
Communication is the third requirement for the development of the superorganism. Much of the communication is chemical. The insects have incredible sensitivity to a large variety of chemical markers produced by the other insects. Once a forager finds a food source they will put down a chemical trail for other foragers to follow. The chemical trail may let other insects know what type of food there is, the quantity or how far away it is. This is a simplistic example that is multiplied by the vast number of operations necessary to keep the colony going. There is also a lot of physical communication. The variables involved in physical communication are only limited by the number of body parts each insect has and how many insects can be involved in the actions. Some foragers will lead other insects to a food source by maintaining physical contact as they walk down the trail. They also pass food and body fluids.
At the top level of complexity are the leaf cutter ants. The authors state that they are the second most complex society in the world and I will not argue with them. There are many different species of leaf cutters who all live by raising the same species of edible fungus. They cut up leaves to provide a growing medium for the fungus. Some species use the silk from larvae to hold pieces of cut up leaves together and build growing beds for the fungus. There is a photo of an ant holding a larvae above some leaf pieces and you can see a line of silk from the larvae down. Truly amazing were the species who have a symbiotic relationship with parasites that produces antibiotics for the fungus. These ants showed up about 45 million years ago.
Reading this book made being a scientist sound like a nice way to live. A lot of the research that was described seemed like play for grownups. In the chapter on colony architecture the scientists would fill a colony with plaster of paris or molten aluminum and them excavate the dirt to reveal the structure of the colony. Some of the photos had large groups of ants with colored dots on them so the scientists could follow their activities. I am really glad I took the time to read this book. Maybe I will get an ant farm. ( )

Reading for the "Altruism" theme at the Bookish club. (It makes perfect sense, shut up.) This is a deeply intimidating book - 500 big pages full of big words - but it's been really interesting when I've had the gumption to focus on it.

Yeah, I said gumption.