TY - JOUR
T1 - When being flexible matters
T2 - Ecological underpinnings for the evolution of collective flexibility and task allocation
AU - Staps, Merlijn
AU - Tarnita, Corina E.
PY - 2022/5/3
Y1 - 2022/5/3
N2 - SignificanceA 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.
AB - SignificanceA 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.
KW - division of labor
KW - environmental variability
KW - specialization
KW - task allocation
KW - task switching
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85129188723&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85129188723&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1073/pnas.2116066119
DO - 10.1073/pnas.2116066119
M3 - Article
C2 - 35486699
AN - SCOPUS:85129188723
VL - 119
SP - e2116066119
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
SN - 0027-8424
IS - 18
ER -