RIP E.O. Wilson - He Had an Inordinate Fondness for Ants

Joan Collins in Empire of the Ants

 WaPoo, Edward O. Wilson, Harvard naturalist often cited as heir to Darwin, dies at 92

Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard naturalist whose mapping of social behavior in ants led him to study social behavior in all organisms and who became one of the greatest naturalists of his generation, died Dec. 26 in Burlington, Mass. He was 92.

The E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation announced his death but did not provide a cause.

Often cited as Charles Darwin’s greatest 20th-century heir, Dr. Wilson was an eloquent and immensely influential environmentalist and was the first to determine that ants communicate mainly through the exchange of chemical substances now known as pheromones.

He discovered hundreds of new species by putting his hands in the dirt as a field biologist, synthesized evolving thinking in science and coined new terms, such as biodiversity and biophilia, to explain it. Of his many accomplishments in evolutionary biology, his biggest contribution was probably in the new scientific field of sociobiology, in which he addressed the biological basis of social behavior in animals, including humans.

Joan Weldon in Them!

He wrote scientific works and popular science, receiving two Pulitzer Prizes for nonfiction as well as the National Medal of Science. The avuncular naturalist was not universally lauded; protesters who objected to his main theory once dumped ice water on his head at a scientific conference.

Dr. Wilson went on to become a leading advocate and popular interpreter of ecological diversity. He prompted the creation of the Encyclopedia of Life project, an online collaborative encyclopedia of all living species known to science. At 80 years old, he published his first novel, about a boy and a colony of ants. His most significant and controversial idea appeared in his 1975 book, “Sociobiology,” which described the role that genetics plays in the social behavior of organisms. The first 25 chapters built his unifying theory of behavior in the animal world, a monumental achievement in itself.

The controversy came from the last chapter, on humankind. Dr. Wilson proposed that human behavior is genetically based, that humans inherit a propensity to acquire behavior and social structures, including a division of labor between the sexes, parental-child bonding, heightened altruism toward closest kin, incest avoidance, suspicion of strangers, tribalism, male dominance and territorial aggression over limited resources.

He later noted in “Naturalist,” his 1994 autobiography, that his was “an exceptionally strong hereditarian position for the 1970s.”

The response was furious, starting at his own school, where colleagues accused him of genetic determinism and tied the theory to Nazi eugenics, racism, sexism, sterilization and restrictions on immigration. Demonstrators disrupted the campus, calling his theory an apologia for the status quo.

I still have copy of Sociobiology. 

British evolutionary biologist and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane quipped that if a god or divine being had created all living organisms on Earth, then that creator must have an “inordinate fondness for beetles.”

The Wombat is back from the hospital and cleaning up old business with Rule 5 Sunday: Clearing Out The Bodacious Babe Backlog.