The Morphogenesis of the Superorganism: 2 Communication and Coordination — Behaviour as Morphogenetic Medium

In superorganisms, the field of collective potential is constructed and sustained through communication. Signals — pheromones, tactile cues, vibrations, and even ritualised movements — are not mere triggers of behaviour; they are semiotic instruments, shaping how each individual construes its place within the colony.

Behaviour itself becomes a morphogenetic medium. Each act — a forager’s path, a guard’s patrol, a worker’s load-bearing — is both a reading of the field and a contribution to it. These actions propagate through the colony, producing gradients of influence that align local potentials with the emergent collective. Feedback loops amplify, dampen, or redirect responses, producing reflexive alignment across space and time.

Coordination in the superorganism is not imposed from above; it is emergent. The colony does not need a central controller because the topology of semiotic interactions encodes alignment. Local interactions, repeated and integrated, generate systemic coherence. Each individual acts as both interpreter and author of the collective field, their behaviours simultaneously reading and writing the colony’s ongoing narrative.

Crucially, these communication networks enable anticipatory action. A forager senses a gradient of pheromone and interprets not only the current state of resources but the colony’s past activity and future potential. Behaviour is temporally extended: each act of coordination carries the semiotic weight of collective memory and projected need.

Through this lens, communication and coordination are the living syntax of superorganism morphogenesis. Behaviour is not simply functional; it is the medium through which collective reflexivity emerges. The colony becomes a distributed intelligence, a system in which coherence, adaptability, and persistence are continuously negotiated through semiotic alignment.