No, I’m not talking about building an ark. It’s more complex than that and not necessarily aquatic. Ants accomplish tasks through self-assembly — linking their bodies and forming chains, ladders, walls, or rafts. Sometimes the tasks are mundanely important (get food), other times they are urgently critical to colony survival. During floods, some ants self-assemble into living rafts to protect queens and other vulnerable colony members. Self-assembly is a process in which unorganized parts come together in an organized structure.
Ants are social animals known for working together to solve problems far bigger than any one individual can handle. Like humans, ants enhance their individual response to emergencies by coordinating with others, and different members take on different roles. A recent study showed even more than this specialization — ants have memories of what roles worked best for the situation and their memories persist over time. There’s a lesson for us in the behavior of these humble ants. Humans now face the biggest problems of our species’ existence and consequences are rippling across the earth, touching all life. By acting collectively we can mitigate climate chaos problems.
Scientists studied Alpine silver ants to learn how they assemble into rafts and discovered the ants have designated “stations” they occupy each time a raft is formed. Ants remember where they were effective and repeat this when needed. A previous study in 2014 showed that worker ants protected the all-important queen ant in the center of the raft with brood members (pupae and babies) near the bottom to provide buoyancy. Worker ants link to form roof, floor and walls around these vulnerable members.
In the new study ants were color-coded by painting their abdomens, then videotaped during artificially-created floods (see video at the end). Researchers saw that the same individuals repeatedly took top, middle, base or side position in the raft time after time. If pupae or baby ants were present, these were tucked into the middle of the raft along with the queen while the larger ants took surrounding protective positions. The ants remember what they did that was effective and repeat it when the same trouble re-occurs.
"These elaborate rafts are some of the most visually stunning examples of cooperation in ants, they are just plain cool. Although people have observed self-assemblages in the past, it's exciting to make new strides in understanding how individuals coordinate to build these structures,” said Jessica Purcell, a study author from The University of California, Riverside.
By studying self-assembly in ants under differing circumstances, scientists gather information they can apply to other species in emergency situations. As earth experiences increasingly frequent and severe emergencies related to interactions among issues such as over-population, socio-political policies, and climate change, we could learn from ants.
- Ants don’t wait to be sure there is a flood and that it threatens them personally before forming the raft.
- Everyone knows who are the most vulnerable members and works to protect them.
- Each ant acts independently but as part of a coordinated, cooperative larger system.
- When self-assembly structures are effective, ants remember what they did and repeat it the next time a similar emergency occurs.
In Daily Bucket: Wednesday News, from Overseas on 12 April, marsanges commented about how his home in Europe responded to the emergency of Chernobyl 30 years ago. (My bold added.)
To me it was also a lesson in unpreparedness of “official” society structures ... there were [about] two weeks when official, political government was totally eclipsed and news and debates were exclusively happening between local media and local physics people and local agency professionals, everyone trying to keep everyone else cool. it made a deep impression on me (on how important the civility/civil coherence of the everyday people is, since structures can dissolve in a heartbeat) [...] Then it was all sorted out eventually (of course) and the danger of a panic was over [...], it was a stress test on society and it was instructive to see just how that played out.
Humans are facing problems for which we have no global structural response. Our colony is the entire world and we must work together to protect our most vulnerable members as soon as they become threatened, whether these are nations, regions, watersheds, specific organisms, or social groups. We are facing myriad situations scattered around the world with no centralized official preparation. Like ants experiencing sudden flood, we must self-assemble into life rafts. Instant response is needed to protect the colony’s most endangered members.
At the same time we must support others, such as pollinators and their interdependent plants, allowing them to carry out their versions of self-assembly in response to emergencies. For some organisms and ecosystems, we may better support them by doing nothing. We can ensure they have what might be needed (such as protected regions) and leave them alone. As plants and animals move north and upslope fleeing warming temperatures, this might be the most significant help humans can offer: ample space and non-interference.
In other cases, direct action is required, such as every measure that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and adds to protection of coastline populations vulnerable to flooding. And as we are undertaking all these responses, we need to ensure as many of the pieces (organisms, habitats, ecosystems, cultures) are protected. Our steps are similar to those of ants and require that unorganized parts come together in an organized structure.
- Immediate action is necessary, even if we ourselves are safe.
- We must think like a colony and act in concert to protect those who are threatened right now, regardless of who they are and where they live.
- Learn where you are most effective and repeat this when needed.
- Join with others in coordinated, cooperative larger systems.
We need to take a lesson from ants: recognize we are stronger all together and remember that each person’s station depends on who they are and what they can do. Let’s create coherent actions that address this global stress test. Everyone please self-assemble and find your stations.
addendum
I’d written this already weeks ago and then saw a study published May 4th by Think Progress: Scientists May Have Found The Key To Motivating People to Act on Climate Change. The study reported that telling people how to act individually is less effective in motivating people to take action than is framing the topic as one involving collective response.
Here is the abstract from the scientific paper Collective responsibility amplifies mitigation behaviors. (I added bold for emphasis.)
How can individuals be convinced to act on climate change? It is widely assumed that emphasizing personal responsibility for climate change is effective at increasing pro-climate behavior whereas collectively framing the causes of climate change diffuses responsibility and dampens the incentive for individual action. We observe the opposite result. Here we find, across three experiments, that emphasizing collective responsibility for the causes of climate change increases pro-climate monetary donations by approximately 7 % in environmental group members and by 50 % in the general public. Further, highlighting collective responsibility amplifies intent to reduce future carbon emissions. In contrast, focusing on personal responsibility for climate change does not significantly alter donations to climate change advocacy or the intent for future pro-climate behavior. These effects replicate and persist multiple days after treatment.