Deborah Gordon (ant biologist) makes this argument in her book Ant Encounters. Because the ants in a colony are all sisters, the unit of reproduction is actually the colony rather than the individual ant. Great book!

The unit of reproduction, and thus the unit of Darwinian evolution!

Thanks for the rec, just ordered it. Its part of a series on complex systems, pretty cool

If you find Ants interesting you would probably like E.O. Wilson's works. That's all he did his entire life, study ants.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_Ants

E.O. Wilson's published work was read by Will Wright, creator of SimCity / The Sims / SimAnt, and the material is what inspired him to create SimAnt :)

Will has also stated that the pheromone system designed for SimAnt was repurposed to be used in The Sims! Very interesting stuff if you ask me :)

Thank you. What a life!

An interesting follow-up thought is to what degree that is also true of humans and their tribes.

"A colony of ants is more than just an aggregate of insects that are living together. One ant is no ant." - E. O. Wilson

Have you extended that idea to the perspective of your cells and you, and thought up any major differences?

(Genuine question, the biggest difference I can think of is most of our cells are in permanent physical contact.)

Actually yes, its an interesting thought. Not only are we a cooperative group of independent cells but those cells are fully replaced as we age so not even the original cells we start with. We are essentially walking cities of cells and somehow we gain consciousness. Pretty wild.

> but those cells are fully replaced as we age

Not nerve cells. Our post-childhood adult brains persist until we die, so the city of cells (nice image BTW) has a permanent and persistent ruling council, as it were, even if the citizens come and go.