Can "super-organisms" help us in understanding EvoDevo?

Evolution & Development, or "EvoDevo," research draws from a long history of work in both fields, but is considered a new theoretical and methodological approach because of the novel ways people are attempting to integrate our understanding of these two fundamental biological processes.

That said, much of EvoDevo research still confines itself to thinking about organisms like mice, flies, sea urchins and the like - interesting and powerful models for understanding both evolution and development for sure, but also limited in many ways. What's more, the embryonic stages of these creatures is the main focus even though it is often juvenile and adult stages are the ones most relevant to natural selection in an ecological context.

In this sense EvoDevo has may be limiting itself very much, both conceptually and theoretically, in not taking into account other kinds of organisms. Such as? Such as ant and bees and other forms of colonial organisms that in many senses represent "superorganisms" whose development and evolution can be analzed on a whole other level of biological organization. This paper explores this possibility further, acknowledging that many of the founding principles o EvoDevo as we know it today in fact derive from insights first made in colonial organisms and that ther is a need to again "think outside the embryo"...

Click the diagram above for the PDF of the paper.