Natures wonders: ant group actions; individuals programmed (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, August 05, 2018, 12:00 (2300 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This study concerned individual actions of the nest when a group is active.

dhw: There wouldn’t be much to study if there weren’t individual actions and if the group was inactive.

DAVID: Our cells make much more complicated decisions on their own, with each cell programmed to choose in concert with his fellows so an organ runs properly.

dhw: Of course our decisions are more complex. But if our cells make complicated decisions on their own, they are not programmed. The leaders decide, the rest follow.

DAVID: Our cells are programmed to work together for proper organ function.

dhw: You say the cells are programmed. The article says the cells make complicated decisions on their own.

DAVID: The article discusses how groups of ants and individual ants react. It concludes individuals are programmed. No cells anywhere.

I used ants as an analogy to how cell communities work. The article tells us how leader groups of ants make collective decisions, and the ants at the back follow. That is how I propose cell communities also work: the “leaders” work out what is to be done, and the rest put the decision into operation. If there is a choice, a collective decision is a decision, it is not automatic behaviour.

Under “cell communication”:

QUOTE: "It's interesting that these bacteria, which are so-called simple, single-cell organisms, are using a fairly sophisticated strategy to solve this community-level problem," said Larkin. "It's sophisticated enough that we humans are using it to extract oil, for example.'"

DAVID: Most likely an automatic electrochemical series of reactions from interior to exterior, passed from contiguous cell to contiguous cell.

Yes, communication entails passing information from interior to exterior by automatic electrochemical means. We humans do it all the time. But one should not confuse the means of communication with the reasons for communicating. Even so-called simple single-cell organisms may need fairly sophisticated strategies of communication because they have fairly sophisticated ideas to communicate as a consequence of their autonomous intelligence!