<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This paper excavates the epistemological and ontological foundations of a rapidly emerging field called sociogenomics in relation to the development of social insects as models of social behavior. Its center-stage is “the genome,” where social and environmental information and genetic variation interact to influence social behavior through dynamic shifts in gene expression across multiple bodies and time-scales. With the advent of whole-genome sequencing technology, comparative genomics, and computational tools for mining patterns of association across widely disparate datasets, social insects are being experimented with to identify genetic networks underlying autism, novelty-seeking and aggression evolutionarily shared with humans. Drawing on the writings of key social insect biologists, and historians and philosophers of science, I investigate how the historical development of social insect research on wasps, ants and bees shape central approaches in sociogenomics today, in particular, with regards to shifting understandings of “the individual” in relation to “the social.”</p></abstract>

This paper excavates the epistemological and ontological foundations of a rapidly emerging field called sociogenomics in relation to the development of social insects as models of social behavior. Its center-stage is “the genome,” where social and environmental information and genetic variation interact to influence social behavior through dynamic shifts in gene expression across multiple bodies and time-scales. With the advent of whole-genome sequencing technology, comparative genomics, and computational tools for mining patterns of association across widely disparate datasets, social insects are being experimented with to identify genetic networks underlying autism, novelty-seeking and aggression evolutionarily shared with humans. Drawing on the writings of key social insect biologists, and historians and philosophers of science, I investigate how the historical development of social insect research on wasps, ants and bees shape central approaches in sociogenomics today, in particular, with regards to shifting understandings of “the individual” in relation to “the social.”

The Social Evolving: Sociogenomics on the Wings of Social Insects

HoST - Journal  of History of Science and Technology

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"The Social Evolving: Sociogenomics on the Wings of Social Insects"}

This paper excavates the epistemological and ontological foundations of a rapidly emerging field called sociogenomics in relation to the development of social...

The Social Evolving: Sociogenomics on the Wings of Social Insects

Published Online: Nov 15, 2019

Page range: 86 - 117

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/host-2019-0014

Keywords
sociogenomics, social insect, sociobiology, postgenomics, biology and society

© 2019 Sainath Suryanarayanan, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

The Social Evolving: Sociogenomics on the Wings of Social Insects

Published Online: Nov 15, 2019

Page range: 86 - 117

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/host-2019-0014

Keywordssociogenomics, social insect, sociobiology, postgenomics, biology and society

© 2019 Sainath Suryanarayanan, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
sociogenomics, social insect, sociobiology, postgenomics, biology and society