E. O. Wilson Still Thrives on Being a Scientific Provocateur

https://www.wired.com/story/at-90-e-o-wilson-thrives-on-being-a-scientific-provocateur/

by objections • 7 years ago

45 11 7 years ago

iarejenius• 7 years ago

His book, Letters to a Young Scientist, is a great read even if you're not a scientist. It's one of those books you wish you had read when you were a teenager.

onychomys2• 7 years ago

I love Ed Wilson. But I think it's so odd that his group selection theories get such a fawning treatment by journalists. I mean, he publishes in Nature, and the next month 140 other evolutionary biologists sign a letter telling him that he's wrong. He claims it's because his new idea is threatening everybody else's livelihoods. But surely it's more parsimonious that when it's 4 against 140 that the 4 are just plain wrong.

jly2• 7 years ago

I'm also a huge fan of Wilson's books, but his most recent two evolution-focused works ('The Social Conquest of Earth' and the new 'Genesis') really double-down on the ideas of group selection. I guess this definitely qualifies as provocative, but it is certainly an extreme minority opinion, as you've pointed out. The writing is as eloquent as ever, but they're not books I would point someone to as a starting point on these ideas. His newfound doubts and critiques of inclusive fitness theory are not shared by the majority of biologists.

User23• 7 years ago

Isn’t that true of many scientific advances? A claim that everyone else is getting it wrong is going to be met with skepticism initially and sometimes for quite a while.

Of course it could just be wrong too.

torstenvl• 7 years ago

Except that E. O. Wilson was an immense group selection skeptic until his 80s, when he decided he was wrong and threw in with D. S. Wilson's ideas (sometimes called "neo-group selection"). See D. S. Wilson and E. O. Wilson, Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology, 82 Q. Rev. Bio. 327 (2008).

It's not like this is his own pet theory and he's trumpeting it out of ego. If anything, it demonstrates humility about his earlier dismissiveness.

pierrebai• 7 years ago

Clearly I'm no expert in the field, but I've no understood the objections to group selection.

From what I've read, the objector claim that genes get selected and this slection necessarily passes by reproduction which is done on an individual basis.

Yet, especially inthe example of ants, two neighbour colonies of ants of the same specie might have a queen with different genes and if the difference grant and advantages the one with the better gene pool with spawn other similar colonies which woudl supplant the inferior one. In each colonies, non-reproductive ants with the better gene don't reproduce themselves but yet it's their better genes that supplant the neighbouring colonies. The queen does no work other than lay eggs, so it does not not contribute the the higher success rate ofthe colonies. Clearly, the behaviour of non-reproducing ants has a direct influence on the gene pool.

For example, the better gene might make better warrior ants. They don't reproduce themselves, yet the gene helps the colonies.

The same argument could be made of two wolf packs, or any two competing group. Of course, in those case, you can look at it at an individual level, but the better gene will sprad at the group level. (Ignoring if a wolf could switch pack to spread the gene to the other pack. I'm here assuming this doesn't happen for the sake of the argument.) The more social the species, the more the group-level genes can influence the chances of reproductions of those not harboring the gene but part of the group, which make the group more successful, which eventually will make the gene spread in the group through gene exchange and selection during reproduction. For example, if the gene leads to better caring between individuals, it benefits the entire group harboring individual with that traits and eventually the group with the highest percentage of that gene will win out.

onychomys2• 7 years ago

It's a little tough to explain without resorting to a level of math nerd that is hard to type out here, but the basic problem with it is that there's too much gene flow between demes (partially isolated intra-breeding populations), and that swamps the relatively weak effects of natural selection. It's part of the reason that almost all speciation is allopatric, because without that isolation, the effects of selection get wiped out by cross-breeding.

Jun8• 7 years ago

My son (he's 12) is currently infatuated with ants, he bought a colony from a GAN farmer through AntsCanada and is watching his videos all the time (they are great, by the way). We checked out Holldobler and Wilson's epic tome Ants (it's too expensive, even for a used copy, but a beautiful, large volume) but he found Wilson's Journey to the Ants much more readable, he's going through it page by page, taking notes, which I've never seen him to with a book before.

So, this led to some ant-related discussions with him. Did you know that ant colonies can have memories older than individual ants? (see this great Ted talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/deborah_gordon_digs_ants?language=...) The bizarre concept of eusociality also came up, how did such a thing involve? If ants (and termites and bees) are so successful with this strategy why wasn't it adopted by more species? According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality very few animals other than these exhibit eusociality (humans aside, which presents a complicated case).

There's fierce debate about the evolution of eusocial behavior, kin selection vs. other explanations. Wilson's theory presented in his 2010 Nature paper, co-written with two mathematical biologists [1], seems to be at odds with others and generated a strong reaction from other researchers [2] (see this Quora answer for a high-level intro to this technical discussion: https://www.quora.com/Does-EO-Wilson-Corina-Tarnita-and-Mart...).

My son is planning to put his mark on this debate in next year's science fair by trying to measure DNA similarity of worker ants from his colony :-)

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09205

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09836

jly2• 7 years ago

very few animals other than these exhibit eusociality (humans aside,

Technically, humans are not eusocial, which by definition requires a biological division of reproductive labor. Most eusocial species actually have significant morphological differences in their classes (i.e. females that physically can or cannot reproduce).

Wilson tends to repeat the idea of humans and other primates as eusocial which I find confusing.

Eusociality and its evolution is indeed a fascinating topic. There are some great discussions on this from WD Hamilton (the study of led him to inclusive fitness theory and kin selection) and Richard Alexander (who discovered the only eusocial mammal - the naked mole-rat).

lazzlazzlazz• 7 years ago

humans are not eusocial, which by definition requires a biological division of reproductive labor

Wouldn't the biological division of labor regarding breast-feeding in humans be sufficient? It's a significant morphological difference.

E. O. Wilson Still Thrives on Being a Scientific Provocateur

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