THRIVING WITHOUT MANAGEMENT: ANT COLONY ORGANIZATION
Deborah M. Gordon, Stanford University
Wednesday, November 19, 4:00-5:30 pm
5 Cambridge Center, MIT Building NE25, Room 746, McClintock Room

Abstract
An ant colony operates without any hierarchy or central control. The talk will describe how harvester ant colonies regulate foraging behavior in response to changing conditions, and ask whether natural selection favors greater sensitivity to fluctuations in the availability of food.

Speaker bio
Deborah M. Gordon is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University.  She is the author of Ants at Work, and a second book on the ant colony as a complex system is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. Her research interests on the behavior and ecology of ants are outlined at http://www.stanford.edu/~dmgordon.

Click here to go back to the Fall 2008 CCI seminar series schedule.