Colony-Level Selection
Individual ants don't reproduce. Colonies do. This means selection operates at the colony level:
- Colonies with better foraging strategies produce more reproductives
- Those reproductives found new colonies
- Successful strategies spread through the population
- Evolution optimizes collective behavior, not individual behavior
Cultural Transmission
Gordon observed that colony strategies persist beyond genetic transmission:
- Pheromone trails encode successful paths (environmental memory)
- Nest architecture embodies accumulated solutions
- New ants learn by following established patterns
- This is a form of cultural evolution
Strategy Diversity
Neighboring colonies in the same environment often have different strategies:
- Some forage early, some forage late
- Some are aggressive, some are cautious
- Some specialize, some generalize
This diversity is maintained because different strategies succeed in different conditions.
Application: Pattern Evolution
Our colony implements similar evolution:
- Patterns that succeed get reinforced (positive feedback)
- Patterns that fail decay (negative feedback)
- Cross-mission transfer spreads successful strategies
- Colony "births" sub-colonies that inherit superhighways
We're not programming strategies—we're evolving them.
"The colony's fitness is not the sum of individual fitnesses. The colony is the unit of selection."