Colonies Have Personalities
Through 25 years of following the same colonies, Gordon discovered that colonies have persistent personalities that transcend individual ants.
Some colonies are aggressive, some are cautious. Some forage heavily, some conserve. These traits persist even as every individual ant is replaced (ants live ~1 year; colonies live 20-30 years).
Age Brings Stability
Young colonies are volatile—quick to react, prone to over-commit. Mature colonies are stable—measured responses, efficient allocation.
This isn't because individual ants become wiser. It's because larger populations create more stable statistics.
Collective Memory Without Individual Memory
Experience creates collective memory—but not through any ant remembering. Instead:
- Pheromone trails encode past successes
- Nest architecture reflects historical activity
- Population distributions remember what worked
The colony "remembers" through its environment, not through any brain.
Application: Colony Development
Our colony will exhibit the same pattern:
- Young colonies (few ants) → volatile behavior, high exploration
- Mature colonies (many ants) → stable behavior, efficient exploitation
- Superhighways accumulate → collective wisdom crystallizes
- Pattern library grows → cross-mission transfer improves
"Wisdom emerges from age, not individual learning."