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.
