212 - Deborah Gordon: Ants, Myrmecology, and Collective Behavior

Patreon: https://bit.ly/3v8OhY7 Deborah Gordon is Professor of Biology at Stanford University. She is a myrmecologist—an entomologist who studies ants—focusing on how complex behavior emerges from ant colonies, which have no central control. In this episode, Deborah and Robinson discuss some of the distinctive features of ants, how pheromones help to determine their behavior, examples of fascinating ant species, collective ant behavior, and the life cycle of an ant colony. For more of Deborah’s work on collective behavior, check out her book The Ecology of Collective Behavior (Princeton, 2023). The Gordon Lab: https://web.stanford.edu/~dmgordon/ Ants at Work: https://a.co/d/7bpokYU The Ecology of Collective Behavior: https://a.co/d/1bBT1h7 OUTLINE 00:00 Introduction 02:33 Ants and Embryology 05:29 General Features of Ants 13:14 Some Fascinating Ant Species 28:20 Pheromones and Ant Behavior 38:17 Ant Slavery 41:30 Collective Ant Behavior 47:04 A Colony’s Life Cycle 59:01 Revisiting Embryology Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, and everyone in-between.