A Conversation With E. O. Wilson & Bert Holldobler November 20, 2008

Harvard Book Store is delighted to welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning authors E.O. WILSON and BERT HÖLLDOBLER for a discussion of their newly co-authored study, The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies. The evening's conversation will be moderated by award-winning journalist ALLAN COUKELL.

Coming eighteen years after the publication of Wilson and HÖLLDOBLER's The Ants, this new volume expands our knowledge of the social insects (among them, ants, bees, wasps, and termites) and is based on remarkable research conducted mostly within the last two decades.

These superorganisms—a tightly knit colony of individuals, formed by altruistic cooperation, complex communication, and division of labor—represent one of the basic stages of biological organization, midway between the organism and the entire species. The study of the superorganism, as the authors demonstrate, has led to important advances in our understanding of how the transitions between such levels have occurred in evolution and how life as a whole has progressed from simple to complex forms. Ultimately, this book provides a deep look into a part of the living world hitherto glimpsed by only a very few.

Official Website: http://www.harvard.com/events/press_release.php?id=2172