The question of why an individual would actively kill itself has been an evolutionary mystery. Death could hardly provide a fitness advantage to the dying individual. However, a new study has found ...

Should a beehive be viewed as a collection of individual organisms, or a single organism unto itself? Or both? Over the last several days I've written about the proposition that evolution can't be ...

The world's biggest fungus, discovered in Oregon's Blue Mountains in 2001, is challenging traditional notions of what constitutes an individual. The underground fungus--estimated to be between ...

Individual organisms in a community interact in many different ways. An interaction may benefit both individuals, or the interaction may benefit one organism to the detriment of the other. An ...

Cassandra Extavour and her colleagues, who study the origins of multicellular organisms and the evolution of cooperation, still disagree on the meaning of key concepts such as cooperation, competition ...