Evolution and 'superorganisms'

A report in Wired News alerts us to new thinking about evolution which takes account of organisations, complexity and symbiosis. It's also relevant to the ongoing project of mine linking principalities and powers in the New Testament with emergent properties of social organisms/organisations. Biologists Take Evolution Beyond Darwin -- Way Beyond: commenting on social insects like ants and bees, "until recently, scientists thought the division of labor had a genetic basis, but after scientists sequenced the honeybee genome, they couldn't find a trigger. Hyper-specialization seems to be an emergent property of the collective. 'That's a specific example of how a new pattern can be thrown into play,' Amdam said. 'You have an ordinary life cycle in an individual, but in a social context it's exploited by the colony.'
The superorganism is still shaped by mutation and natural selection, but only recently have biologists, accustomed to thinking of evolution at the individual level, applied the superorganism concept to insects. It may very well have even broader applications."