Summary made by Quivr/GPT-4
This document is a dissertation by Merlijn Staps, presented to Princeton University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The dissertation is focused on the evolution of collective organization in biological systems, such as multicellular organisms and social insect colonies.
The dissertation explores the factors that have shaped the evolution of diverse forms of collective organization. It uses new theoretical approaches to draw connections between different systems and propose general principles for the evolution of collective organization.
The dissertation is divided into five chapters. The first two chapters focus on the role of ancestral constraints and ecological conditions in the evolution of multicellularity. They suggest that diverse multicellular life cycles could have emerged through the co-option of ancestral gene regulatory mechanisms.
Chapters 3 and 4 explore the role of ecology in dynamic collective organization. They develop models to show how diverse strategies for task allocation and communication can be seen as adaptive responses to different environmental circumstances.
The final chapter, Chapter 5, investigates the role of development in the evolutionary diversification of rodent stripe patterns. It combines pattern formation models with empirical data to show how the underlying developmental processes have shaped these patterns.
In simple terms, this dissertation is about understanding how and why different forms of life have evolved to organize themselves in the way they do. It looks at everything from how cells in a body work together, to how insects in a colony divide tasks, to how patterns form on a rodent's fur. The findings could help us better understand the diversity of life on our planet.