Colony-level cognition

Current Biology, Volume 19, Issue 10, 26 May 2009

James A.R. Marshall and Nigel R. Franks

"What is cognition? We favour the following definition of cognition: “cognition [is] the ability to use internal representations of information acquired in separate events, and to combine these to generate novel information and apply it in an adaptive manner” (Chittka and Osorio, 2007).

What is ‘colony-level cognition’? For some time now it has been recognised that colonies of certain social organisms, for example social insects such as ants or honeybees, can legitimately be regarded as functionally integrated ‘superorganisms’. In a social insect colony, colony-level cognition can be understood as cognition where internal representations are within the individual insects and their interactions with one another, just as in a brain the internal representations of cognition are in action potentials of neurons and their patterns of interaction..."

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