E.O. Wilson: Lord of the Ants

Posted on March 30, 2009  Comments (2)

This is a great webcast on E.O Wilson‘s career studying ants and animal behavior from NOVA.

Not only is the scientific knowledge very interesting it again shows that challenging conventional wisdom, while part of the scientific method, does not mean it is an easy process for those pioneers. From his web site:

In 1971 Wilson published his second major synthesis, The Insect Societies, which formulated the existing knowledge of the behavior of ants, social bees, social wasps, and termites, on a foundation of population biology. In it he introduced the concept of a new discipline of sociobiology, the systematic study of the biological basis of social behavior in all kinds of organisms. In 1975 he published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, which extended the subject to vertebrates and united it more closely to evolutionary biology. The foundational discoveries of sociobiology are generally recognized to be the analysis of animal communication and division of labor, in which Wilson played a principal role, and the genetic theory of the origin of social behavior, which he helped to promote and apply in his 1971 and 1975 syntheses. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis was later ranked in a poll of the officers and fellows of the international Animal Behaviour Society as the most important book on animal behavior of all time, and is regarded today as the founding text of sociobiology and its offshoot, evolutionary psychology.

Related: Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration
by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson – Huge Ant NestSymbiotic relationship between ants and bacteriaRoyal Ant Genesposts on antsEncyclopedia of Life

2 Responses to “E.O. Wilson: Lord of the Ants”

  1. GregR
    April 2nd, 2009 @ 11:30 pm

    I am a serious Nova fan, unfortunately Hulu does not work outside of the USA. Neil deGrasse Tyson makes things interesting and easy (relatively) to understand.

  2. Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog » Ant mega-colony
    July 2nd, 2009 @ 8:19 am

    […] posts on ants – E.O. Wilson: Lord of the Ants – Huge Ant Nest by curiouscat   Tags: Life Science, Science, Students   Permalink […]

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