The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies .

WILSON, Edward O. and Bert Holldobler.

$600.00

Item Number: 131084

New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009.

First edition of this work by the award-winning biologists. Quarto, original boards, illustrated. Boldly signed by Edward O. Wilson who has drawn an image of an ant on the half-title page. Fine in a fine dust jacket.

The Superorganism comes eighteen years after the publication of The Ants, this new volume expands our knowledge of the social insects (among them, ants, bees, wasps, and termites) and is based on remarkable research conducted mostly within the last two decades. These superorganisms—a tightly knit colony of individuals, formed by altruistic cooperation, complex communication, and division of labor—represent one of the basic stages of biological organization, midway between the organism and the entire species. The study of the superorganism, as the authors demonstrate, has led to important advances in our understanding of how the transitions between such levels have occurred in evolution and how life as a whole has progressed from simple to complex forms.