Collective problem solving by social insects

Super-organisms such as social insects solve complex physiological problems collectively, sans plan or planner, on scales much larger than the individual. Motivated by observations in the field and in the lab, I will describe our attempts to understand how insects build and use active architectures to regulate their micro-environment in such contexts as termite mound morphogenesis and physiology, and active ventilation, mechanical stabilization and thermoregulation in bee clusters. These everyday examples of functional collective sensing and action link physics, physiology and behavior on multiple scales and might be of relevance beyond the world of social insects, which we will demonstrate with some preliminary experiments using robotic ants.