"More is different: the origins of major evolutionary transitions"Tarnita, CorinaWhether we think about the evolution of multicellularity, the evolution of eusociality, or even the evolution of human sociality and culture, at the origin, nascent groups had to outcompete, or at least manage to coexist with, their solitary ancestor. Benefits conferred by a larger size (e.g., better motility, improved resource detection/acquisition, division of labor, escaping predation) have often been assumed theoretically. But, in order for such direct benefits to allow the nascent group life cycle to invade the ancestral state, they would have had to arise at very small group sizes (in the single or at most double digits). This raises a suite of critical questions: under what conditions can very small groups have a fitness that is larger than the sum of their parts? Escaping predation might offer one route, but what about the others? Are very few, and typically also very similar, individuals able to self-organize to reliably and reproducibly lead to emergent group properties, despite inherent stochasticity? In the study of major transitions, substantially less theoretical work has been done to explore mechanistically (rather than assume phenomenologically) the self-organization potential and emergent properties of small, nascent groups. Yet, I will argue using both theoretical and empirical results that this type of approach has enormous potential to complement existing efforts and provide a new lens for posing questions about the origin of major hierarchical transitions. |
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