Superorganism

A superorganism is an organism consisting of many organisms. Examples include social insects such as ants and termites.

The term superorganism is used most often to describe a social unit of eusocial animals, where division of labour is highly specialised and where individuals are not able to survive by themselves for extended periods. Ants are the best-known example of such a superorganism. A superorganism can be defined as "a collection of agents which can act in concert to produce phenomena governed by the collective", phenomena being any activity "the hive wants" such as ants collecting food and avoiding predators, or bees choosing a new nest site. Superorganisms tend to exhibit homeostasis, power law scaling, persistent disequilibrium and emergent behaviours.

The term was coined in 1789 by James Hutton, the "Father of Geology", to refer to Earth in the context of geophysiology. The Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock, and Lynn Margulis as well as the work of Hutton, Vladimir Vernadsky and Guy Murchie, have suggested that the biosphere itself can be considered a superorganism, although this has been disputed strongly. This view relates to systems theory and the dynamics of a complex system.

Superorganisms are important in cybernetics, particularly biocybernetics. They exhibit a form of "distributed intelligence", a system in which many individual agents with limited intelligence and information are able to pool resources to accomplish a goal beyond the capabilities of the individuals. Existence of such behavior in organisms has many implications for military and management applications, and is being actively researched.

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