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Originally Posted by jwb
it seems like the concept of a superorganism is not necessarily the same as a super colony. Not sure if I'm misunderstanding you but it sounds like you are conflating the two. A colony can be a super organism without needing multiple queens etc. If the ants are born into specific castes and more specifically are born without any way to reproduce other than through the queen, that sort of set up seems like one where increased coordination and cooperation between individuals is directly linked to fitness.
As for the super colonies, I can't speak generally but say the one in the bbc documentary that was farming aphids on the spruce trees, Attenborough does mention how the cooperation there is serving a practical benefit with regard to being granted access to the resources that can be marshalled by that big of a colony.
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Yes, I did conflate the two. I've also since watched his lecture that you posted.
His lecture wasn't very illuminating. To my mind, he suggests that evolution happens at multiple levels. Through evolution at the gene/individual level, you can, by chance, evolve a set of important pre-conditions. Something he mentions is a defensible nest and the trait of not dispersing, but staying put. Wilson's thought is that if "normal" evolution leads to a species/colony attaining all these pre-conditions, they can flip over into an altruistic colony. That colony then has to make it in a competition with other non-altruistic colonies and has to be competitive. If it is, it will be selected for at the group level. It is my impression that he thinks group selection is what keeps these groups altruistic over time, yet he does not go into the supposed mechanisms by which that should work. He does mention that it can be shown in maths which I assume means you can make it work in a model. It's true, you can, but my current impression is that this is possible because the living conditions for organisms in models can become very weird, like they can have no parental investment in their young and possibly become adults once they're born, there may be no cost to simply living, etc.
Anyways, something he fails to bring up is whether or not the ants he talks about are kin. He says he distrusts kin selection as an explanation for superorganisms and so, if the individual ants were not kin, he could have capitalized and gotten support for his statement by mentioning that, but he didn't. Hence, I assume the ants in his examples were kin. As mentioned, kin selection theory has no trouble explaining the evolution of a superorganism and actually, solving that mystery was one of kin selection's big selling points in the 60s. Kin selection alone cannot explain a supercolony, but a superorganism is no trouble.. as long as the individuals that make up the superorganism are closely related.
There are other ways to evolve cooperation (like reciprocality), but kin selection is expected to lead to higher apparent "altruism" (altruism on the level of individuals, selfishness on the level of genes).
The word superorganism isn't one that I myself would use because it kinda hides the fact that ant hills are colonies occasionally marked by conflicts of interests between its inhabitants. Individuals don't always behave altruistic and even if they did, normal evolutionary theory (kin selection / inclusive fitness) can predict when that altruism should break down. The word is a heuristic device good for illustrating a point or to use in sentences like "evolution of the superorganism", but that's about it.
He's mostly in the world of ants, but when talking about superorganisms, it would be interesting to go into the world of colony animals, like siphonophores which is the group containing the famous portuguese man o war.
In their specific case, all the zooids (individuals) that make up the man o war are genetically identical and so kin selection would fully explain that.