Ant Encounters

"Deborah Gordon has produced a delightful and scholarly introduction to ant colony organization that teaches as it entertains. Building on decades of observation, experimentation, and simulation, she convincingly demonstrates that ants form self-organized communities, in which individual tasks change dynamically as conditions and interaction networks shift. Placing her work in a historical framework that reaches from Darwin to political theory, Gordon conclusively makes the case that ant societies are model systems for the study of collective behavior." --Simon A. Levin, Princeton University "Deborah Gordon‘s amazingly detailed book on the complex web of interactions in ant colonies makes fascinating reading for anyone who is curious about the world around us. And--even more interestingly from my point of view--this book provides rich fodder for understanding other kinds of collective intelligence, from neurons in the brain to human societies linked by the Internet." --Thomas W. Malone, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Ant societies are like--and not like--human societies. Deborah Gordon‘s new book takes on these fascinating contradictions and achieves the rare balance of serving as an introduction for those wishing to learn about the wonders of the ant society, as well as a guide to the latest developments in group functioning and development." --Peter Nonacs, University of California, Los Angeles "Gordon convincingly argues that the behavior of ants within and outside a colony depends largely upon the simple metric of interactions with others. Provocative and stimulating, this book challenges prevailing paradigms and dogmas about social insect behavior. It will engage biologists interested in social insects and nonbiologists interested in complex systems." --Mark Elgar, University of Melbourne