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Individual and collective cognition in social insects: what’s in a name?

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Abstract

Descriptions of types of intelligence or cognition that conceptualize and categorize behavioral capabilities of workers and cooperative groups of eusocial insects have proliferated. Individual workers are described as having cognition, or less frequently, intelligence, and emergent colony-level behavior is typically described as collective intelligence, swarm intelligence, and distributed intelligence (or cognition). These concepts and terms have historical roots in psychology, education, economics, politics, computer science, artificial intelligence, and robotics, and have varied connotations and denotations that often are inconsistent with their initial context of use. Although integration and hybridization among disciplines can be productive, imprecise and potentially misleading applications may limit the ability to accurately describe or conceptualize social insect behavioral phenomena, generate testable hypotheses, and communicate accurately and broadly within the scientific community and with the media and public. Here, we aim to clarify the origins, meanings, and relevance of terms associated with social insect intelligence and cognition. An historical, semantic, and mechanistic analysis suggests that terms may lack relevant conceptual significance and should be carefully evaluated before applying them free-hand to attempt to inform our understanding of social insect cognition at multiple levels. We provide rationale and recommendations for retaining or discontinuing the use of terms.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Drs. Martin Giurfa, Klaus Jaffe, Dominique Lestel, and two anonymous reviewers for insightful comments and Zach Coto, E. Jordan Smith, and Frank Azorsa for review of the manuscript. We are grateful to Drs. Scarlett Howard, Simon Robson, Lida Loukola, and Gillian Ashworth for permission to use their photographs.

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  1. Department of Biology, 5 Cummington Mall, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    James F.A. Traniello

  2. Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale (CRCA-CBI), Université Toulouse 3, Bâtiment 4R3, 118 Route de Narbonne, 31062, Toulouse Cedex 9, France

    Aurore Avarguès-Weber

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Correspondence to James F.A. Traniello.

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This article is a contribution to the Topical Collection “Toward a Cognitive Ecology of Invertebrates” - Guest Editors: Aurore Avarguès-Weber and Mathieu Lihoreau

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Traniello, J.F., Avarguès-Weber, A. Individual and collective cognition in social insects: what’s in a name?. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 77, 119 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-023-03392-w

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