|Ants are tiny and mighty, but as Deborah M. Gordon explains in this Q&A, they are not quite the selfless, moral workers Aesop and other fablers might lead us to believe. Deborah studies ants in hopes of illuminating collective behaviors and complex systems. Here she gives us a glimpse into how and why it all works.|
When did you first realize you wanted to become a scientist? How did you come to the study of ants?
I majored in French as an undergraduate and didn’t really know for sure I wanted to be a scientist until I was in graduate school. I came to the study of ants through reading about the history of developmental biology, and the debate about reductionism around the turn of the 20th century. I was looking for a system that works without central control, like an embryo, that would be easy to observe. I chose ants because it is easy to see what they are doing.
Your current book, Ant Encounters, uses ants as a model for understanding collective behavior and complex systems in general. How so?
What many biological systems have in common is that there is no central control, and the system functions because of the local interactions among parts – whether those are neurons or ants. But we still have a lot to learn about how brains or ant colonies work. We need to learn more about the details of particular systems before we can say for sure what are the properties of all complex systems.
What can we learn about human society from studying ants?
Ants have a lot to teach us about how systems of interacting agents respond to changing conditions. Throughout history we have used ants in fables with morals about hard work and selfless loyalty to the group. But we can probably learn more from ants about how our social networks function than about how we ought to behave. To be more specific, our stories about ants always have morals about how people ought to behave: soldiers should die for their country; we should conserve resources and plan for the future; a dutiful factory worker should cheerfully perform his or her appointed task. These morals come from stories about ants that are not true. Real ants do not offer lessons in behavior. They do, however, provide insight about the dynamics of networks. Ants can show us how the rhythm of local interactions creates patterns in the behavior and development of large groups. There are no morals to be taken from the ants, but there is much to learn about systems without central control.
Can you give readers a bit of a sense of what it’s like to study ants. What are some of the more surprising things you’ve observed?
The best part of field work is when the ants show me something I’ve never seen before, or when I figure out what they are up to. They often surprise me. Sometimes it’s because the colonies are doing something really clever. A few years ago, during the summer monsoon season, I realized that the ants piling twigs around the nest entrance were making a levee to keep water out of the nest. During this year’s field season I was surprised to discover that the ants construct tunnels to constrain the flow of interaction between incoming and outgoing foragers. This makes the regulation of foraging much more precise.
What is the field work like? What is the best part? The most frustrating part?
I have worked for many years in southeastern Arizona and it’s great to be outside in the desert early in the morning; I love the silence and the big sky. For the past few years I’ve also been working in a tropical forest in Mexico, and even though it’s hot and I don’t like mosquitoes, I’m fascinated by the incredible diversity, splendid colors, and rapid growth of everything, including the ants but also the lizards, butterflies, songbirds, and much more.
It can be frustrating when things don’t go as planned but I try to remember that ecology is all about change. Field work would go more rapidly if conditions stayed the same and every day was like the one before, but that never happens.