217 Paleontology, Paleoecology/Taphonomy

Tuesday, 21 October 2025
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
HBGCC, 305

Network Diffusion Models Can Reveal the Physiological Viability of Division of Labor in Colonial Animals

Paper number: 217-14
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 5:00 PM – 5:15 PM

Authors

Abstract

Robust intra-colony resource transport is widely assumed to underlie the evolution of division of labor in colonial animals, where some individuals forgo feeding to perform specialized roles. Yet it remains unclear whether the physiological networks in these colonies can meet the energetic demands such specialization imposes. We test the viability of these networks using a diffusion-on-graphs model of colony-wide energetics in Bryozoa—a model taxon for studying the evolution of modularity, as the physical connections between individual zooids form a tangible network architecture allowing for direct analysis of how resource transport is impacted by evolutionary changes in colony form and functional specialization. Because key physiological parameters like metabolic cost and transport efficiency are difficult to measure directly, we used a comparative method for their estimation: we constructed anatomically accurate network models from a diverse set of species with varying architectures and life histories. By analyzing energetics across this spectrum of empirical colony designs, we sought to identify a single set of physiological parameters that could support the viability of all forms. Our analysis reveals that such a common parameter set exists, demonstrating that a passive diffusion mechanism is quantitatively sufficient to sustain even complex divisions of labor. This modeling framework provides a powerful, non-invasive method for linking organismal architecture to physiological capacity, revealing the fundamental energetic rules that constrain and enable the evolution of coloniality and functional specialization.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-414082

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