Colonial

Colonial animals live in large groups in close proximity to one other. Colonies might exist only at specific times of the year such as the nesting season for many seabirds. Others, such as a beehive or a den of meerkats, contain a single social unit,and often last for longer than the lifetime of an individual member.

Watch video clips from past programmes (7 clips)

In order to see this content you need to have an up-to-date version of Flash installed and Javascript turned on.

Featured in the following TV programmes

About

In biology, a colony (from Latin colonia) refers to several individual organisms of the same species living closely together, usually for mutual benefit, such as stronger defences or the ability to attack bigger prey. Some insects (ants and honey bees, for example) live only in colonies. The Portuguese Man o' War is an example of a colony of four different polyp forms.

A colony of single-celled organisms is known as a colonial organism. Colonial organisms were probably the first step towards multicellular organisms via natural selection. The difference between a multicellular organism and a colonial organism is that individual organisms from a colony can, if separated, survive on their own, while cells from a multicellular lifeform (e.g., cells from a brain) cannot. Volvox (technically a coenebium) is an example for the border between these two states.

A bacterial colony is defined as a visible cluster of organisms growing on the surface of or within a solid medium, theoretically cultured from a single cell. Because all organisms within the colony descend from a single ancestor, they are genetically identical (except for mutations which occur at a low, unavoidable frequency, as well as the more likely possibility of contamination). Obtaining such genetically identical organisms (or pure strains) can be useful in many cases; this is done by spreading bacteria on a culture plate and starting a new stock of bacteria from a single colony.

Read more at Wikipedia

This entry is from Wikipedia, the user-contributed encyclopedia. If you find the content in the 'About' section factually incorrect, defamatory or highly offensive you can edit this article at Wikipedia. For more information on our use of Wikipedia please read our FAQ.

Other Social behaviour Adaptations

Habitats where this adaptation is useful

Explore the BBC

BBC © MMIX

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.