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ANNUAL WEATHER PREDICTIONS. "Many trees determine flower numbers a year in advance and if the spring is cold or water deficient, flower buds are simply abscised to adjust potential fruit production with predicted summer circumstances." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00114-005-0014-9 View in LinkedIn

MAYAPPLE FUTURE DECISIONS. "The assessment is made on a complex of present-day developmental and environmental assessment with the prediction that present day conditions won't differ too much in the future." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00114-005-0014-9 View in LinkedIn

ANTICIPATORY DECISIONS. "A striking example of predictive behavior is exemplified by the Mayapple (and no doubt other forest floor plants) that makes decisions about branching or reproduction 1–2 years in the future." http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00114-005-0014-9 View in LinkedIn

PRECISE REGULATION. “In an undisturbed colony with a properly functioning mound, the nest atmosphere is different from the atmosphere outside. The collective metabolism of the colony, for example, depresses nest oxygen concentration by about 2 kilopascals partial pressure below atmospheric, and elevates nest carbon dioxide concentration by a similar amount.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn

ALIGNMENT WITH THE WIND. “The swarm’s cognitive awareness of mound structure relies upon how the mound translates its interaction with environmental wind into a form this fluid network can interpret. This takes the form of a “map”, a field of wind-induced transient perturbation within the airways of the mound and nest.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn

THE MENTAL MAP. “Mounds and termite colonies at first seem to be an unusual context for a cognitive system to operate. Nevertheless, they arguably meet the requirement. Cognitive systems are fundamentally representation systems: they map an environment onto some interpretable (mental) representation. In conventional cognitive systems, i.e. those that are housed in brains within discrete bodies, sensory transducers encode information about the environment, communications links convey the code to processors which interpret the code and converse with other processors to arrive at a coherent representational map.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn

EXOSKELETON. “It is worth reiterating that the termites do not live in the mound, but in the subterranean nest. Thus, termite workers must somehow become aware of, and respond appropriately to, structural perturbations that may be situated as far as three meters from where they live. This betokens an impressive degree of what might be called “swarm cognition”.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-016-9256-5 View in LinkedIn