Open AccessWhen being flexible matters: Ecological underpinnings for the evolution of collective flexibility and task allocation
Author(s) -
Merlijn Staps,
Corina E. Tarnita
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.011
H-Index - 771
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.2116066119
Subject(s) - task (project management) , flexibility (engineering) , computer science , adaptation (eye) , collective behavior , cognitive psychology , ecology , psychology , economics , biology , management , neuroscience , sociology , anthropology
Significance A central problem in evolutionary biology is explaining variation in the organization of task allocation across collective systems. Why do human cells irreversibly adopt a task during development (e.g., kidney vs. liver cell), while sponge cells switch between different cell types? And why have only some ant species evolved specialized castes of workers for particular tasks? Although it seems reasonable to suppose that such differences reflect, at least partially, the different ecological pressures that systems face, there is no general understanding of how a system’s dynamic environment shapes its task allocation. To this end, we develop a general mathematical framework that reveals how simple ecological considerations could potentially explain cross-system variation in task allocation—including in flexibility, specialization, and (in)activity.