Edward O. Wilson

American entomologist

• Born: June 10, 1929
• Birthplace: Birmingham, Alabama
• Died: December 26, 2021
• Place of death: Burlington, Massachusetts

Wilson described many new species of ants and discovered the chemical nature of ant communication. He synthesized the patterns of social behavior in insects and other organisms, including humans, into a new field of life science called sociobiology. Wilson’s biogeographical work demonstrated the direct relationship between habitat size and biological diversity, leading him to become an advocate for biological conservation.

Early Life

Edward O. Wilson was born in Birmingham, Alabama, to Edward and Inez Wilson. Even at a very young age, Wilson showed an unshakable interest in natural history. At age seven, his parents divorced, leaving Wilson to live with his father, a restless government accountant who moved around a great deal. That same year, Wilson injured his right eye in a fishing accident. His reduced vision limited his ability to observe larger animals, and his poor hearing, which he probably inherited, prevented him from distinguishing animal vocalizations, so the young Wilson turned to the world of insects.

By 1939, the Wilson family had moved to Washington, DC, where the father had a new job. Wilson went on his first insect-collecting expedition in Rock Creek Park at the age of nine. In 1940, the Wilson family moved back to southern Alabama, and the young naturalist spent time examining the insects in the state’s coastal ecosystems. At the age of sixteen, Wilson began to collect flies, but a shortage of collecting pins caused him to switch his focus to ants, which could be stored in vials. Encouragement from Marion R. Smith, an ant specialist from the National Museum of Natural History, motivated Wilson to begin a survey of ant species in Alabama.

To afford a college education, Wilson tried to enlist in the US Army, but he failed the eye examination and was not accepted. He decided to enroll in the affordable University of Alabama, where he earned his BS and MS degrees in biology in 1949 and 1950, respectively. He went to Harvard University for his PhD, which he received in 1955 after conducting an extensive survey of ant species of the South Pacific.

Life’s Work

Wilson was hired as an assistant professor at Harvard in 1956. In the late 1950s, Wilson showed that ant societies are bound together by an intricate system of chemical signals. He called these chemicals pheromones and demonstrated their existence by coaxing a host of tropical fire ants (Solenopsis geminata) down a trail traced by chemicals extracted from the Dufour’s gland found in ant abdomens. When Wilson dipped small papers in the bodily liquids of dead ants and placed them in an ant colony, the ants removed them just as they did the bodies of dead ants. Collaborations with chemists showed that the signal in ant corpses was either oleic acid or its ester. Painting live ants with oleic acid or its ester induced their nest mates to dutifully carry them to the refuse pile outside the nest. From these experiments Wilson concluded that ant social behavior was not learned but instinctive.

Wilson was interested in a systematic synthesis of animal behavior under the aegis of evolutionary biology. The discovery of kin selection in 1964 by William D. Hamilton (1936–2000) provided Wilson an invaluable solution to the nagging problem of altruism in animal behavior. The apparent altruistic behaviors of social insects were explained by the fact that they all had the same mother and thus were genetically similar. Therefore, apparently altruistic acts by worker bees that sting an intruder to death but die doing so serve to preserve the common genes held by the relatives of the workers. Kin selection elegantly explained the evolutionary origin of altruism.

Wilson used kin selection to explain the evolutionary origin of insect social behaviors in his book The Insect Societies (1971). His famous and controversial book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) broadly surveys animal behavior and shows that the social behaviors of invertebrates and vertebrates are rather easily explained by population biology. This book launched a new branch of biology and created new ways of analyzing animal behavior. Wilson’s On Human Nature (1978) extended sociobiology to human behavior and won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.

In 1961, Wilson met ecologist Robert H. MacArthur (1930–72), with whom he collaborated on a general theory of island biogeography. They postulated that the species extinction rates on islands are directly proportional to the rate at which new species colonize the island. As new species arrive on the island from the mainland, some established island species are driven to extinction by competition from the newcomers. Since islands closer to the mainland are subject to greater rates of migration than those farther from the mainland, the extinction rates on islands are directly related to their distance from the mainland. This model of dynamic equilibrium was the subject of Wilson and MacArthur’s famous book, The Theory of Island Biogeography (1967). Wilson demonstrated the main ideas in this book in 1969 by fumigating mangrove islets in the Florida Keys and detailing the rate of recolonization of the islets. The closer the islet was to the mainland, the higher its recolonization rate and the sooner it achieved dynamic equilibrium.

Wilson’s environmental activism began with a 1980 interview published in the January/February issue of Harvard Magazine, in which he argued that biodiversity increased with habitat size and that controlled laboratory experiments in greenhouses and artificial plots showed that removal of individual species decreased ecosystem production and stability. Further research showed that removal of particular key species from ecosystems could cause them to collapse, a point Wilson emphasized in The Diversity of Life (1992). Furthermore, Wilson’s painstaking work on ant classification showed that in most cases ant species were far more diverse than anyone imagined. This point was made repeatedly in his book The Ants (1990), coauthored with Bert H. Hölldobler, which won for Wilson another Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction literature, and in Wilson’s monograph Pheidole in the New World (2003). Essentially, too little was known about most ecosystems to determine their stability or identify their key species. Thus, humanity needed to take definitive steps to begin preserving habitats known to be especially rich in biological diversity. Wilson’s later books The Future of Life (2002) and The Creation (2006) lay out proposals to preserve large swathes of species-rich habitats for the sake of biological conservation. They also warn about the consequences of failing to do so in a timely fashion.

In 2010 Wilson published his first novel, Anthill, which chronicles a man's efforts to protect Alabama's wetlands from development and also tells the story of a war between rival ant colonies. The novel became a best seller and was awarded the Heartland Prize for fiction by the Chicago Tribune. Wilson went on to publish several additional nonfiction works, including The Social Conquest of Earth (2012) and Letters to a Young Scientist (2013), the latter of which serves as a memoir of sorts and provides advice for young scientists seeking to follow in Wilson's footsteps.

Significance

Wilson’s scientific work permanently changed the face of evolutionary biology, taxonomy, and animal behavior. His seemingly preternatural output sprang from his herculean work ethic and astonishingly insightful mind. His work was not only voluminous but also fecund, because it opened previously unexplored research avenues.

Wilson’s creation of the field of sociobiology stands as a legacy to his skills as a consummate synthesizer of scientific knowledge. The application of sociobiology to psychology led to the creation of evolutionary psychology, which seeks to explain the origin of various mental and psychological human traits as a product of natural selection. Though evolutionary psychology remains controversial, it is a fruitful field of inquiry, although its view of human nature is somewhat less than optimistic.

Wilson also was one of the first scientists to construct a firm scientific basis for biological conservation and call attention to increased extinction rates and decreased biodiversity. His work in population biology with MacArthur, which examined the relationship between habitat size and number of species, has also served as one of the main models for conservation biology. He is widely regarded as one of the finest thinkers in the conservation movement.

Bibliography

Alcock, John. The Triumph of Sociobiology. New York: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.

Baxter, Brian. A Darwinian Worldview: Sociobiology, Environmental Ethics, and the Work of Edward O. Wilson. Burlington: Ashgate, 2012. Print.

Malik, Keenan. Man, Beast, and Zombie: The New Science of Human Nature. London: Orion, 2001. Print..

Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print.

Rosenberg, John S. “Of Ants and Earth.” Harvard Magazine Mar./Apr. 2003: 36–41. Print.

Wilson, Edward O. The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. New York: Norton, 2006. Print.

Wilson, Edward O. The Diversity of Life. New York: Norton, 1999. Print.

Wilson, Edward O. Letters to a Young Scientist. New York: Liveright, 2013. Print.

Wilson, Edward O.Naturalist. Washington: Island, 2006. Print..

Wilson, Edward O. On Human Nature. New ed. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004. Print.

Wilson, Edward O. The Social Conquest of Earth. New York: Norton, 2012. Print.

Wilson, Edward O.Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. New ed. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000. Print.