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The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies
W. W. Norton
November 2008
On Sale: November 10, 2008
576 pages ISBN: 0393067041 EAN: 9780393067040 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Ants render the
extraordinary lives of the social insects in this visually
spectacular volume. The Superorganism promises to be one of the most important
scientific works published in this decade. Coming eighteen
years after the publication of The Ants, this new volume
expands our knowledge of the social insects (among them,
ants, bees, wasps, and termites) and is based on remarkable
research conducted mostly within the last two decades.
These superorganisms—a tightly knit colony of individuals,
formed by altruistic cooperation, complex communication,
and division of labor—represent one of the basic stages of
biological organization, midway between the organism and
the entire species. The study of the superorganism, as the
authors demonstrate, has led to important advances in our
understanding of how the transitions between such levels
have occurred in evolution and how life as a whole has
progressed from simple to complex forms. Ultimately, this
book provides a deep look into a part of the living world
hitherto glimpsed by only a very few. 110 color and 100
black-and-white illustrations.
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