Talk:Colony (biology)

message: Not true in the case of Siphonophora.  The zooids cannot survive on their own.  Either Siphonophora are not colonial, or that phrase is innacurate. 66.92.53.49 19:49, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was going to make the same remark. It's even the case with the Portuguese man o' war, mentioned in its article. It's not even a good distinction from individual cells from macroorganisms deemed not colonial; many can reproduce by fragmentation (even organisms as sophisticated as goats and humans, in the early embryonary stages), losing some part, even if the cells are not specialized for reproduction. It seems that there's a continuum between individual cells, colonial unicellular organisms and multicellular organisms, possibly the classification is somewhat fuzzy.--Extremophile (talk) 04:19, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This problem has remained unresolved for seven years; this article and Portuguese man o' war still appear to contradict each other. I've added the expert-subject template to both of them. Joriki (talk) 12:11, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "individual organisms from a colony can ...  survive on their own"??? 

message: Clearly the colony is greater than the organism or individual but smaller than the population itself smaller than the community... but other biological organizations exist bigger than a colony and smaller than population, for all the biological levels of organization the net lacks any proper detail and wikipedia does not even mentions the existance of this, there is no list... Someone with proper knowledge must make one please. -Herle King 200.106.96.129 10:04, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Levels of biological organization

message: a colony of single-celled organisms.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.1.53.40 (talk) 15:00, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  colonial organism 

message: With regard to the comment of 14-July-2009 above, defining "colonial organism" by just giving a phrase ("a colony of single-celled organisms") that is synonymous to the phrase being defined is, well, probably it was just meant as a joke, so probably I should not respond to it.
What's the difference between a Portuguese man-o-war and a cat? Each cell in the former is said to be a separate organism, EVEN THOUGH they all have the same DNA and they are differentiated into different organs and tissues that do different jobs (the tentacles, the sail/bladder-float thing). A cat is the same way, but biologists don't say that every cell in a cat is a separate organism that lives with other cat-cells that do other jobs so that the entire "colony" of cat-cells might survive by cooperating. They say that the cat is one organism. What is the difference?
The sentence below from the article is not a complete answer:
QUOTE:
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.
UNQUOTE
If the different cells of a colonial group can survive alone, why are they grouping together when it's not necessary for survival? It may turn out (but I don't know) that perhaps one cell of a colonial group can SURVIVE on its own (while a cell from a cat can't) but cannot REPRODUCE on its own, so that the only strains that perpetuate themselves are the ones that have the DNA that compels them to form groups capable of reproducing.
When I got to this discussion-page to voice my problems with the answer, I found that not only is it insufficient but it is factually wrong: Other posters here avow that individual cells of Portuguese men-o-war can NOT survive alone.
So, what is it that makes biologists say that a cat is one organism made of many cells but that a Portuguese man'o'war is many organisms (each made of one cell) that find it advantageous to hang out together? I assume that this question has an answer but I don't know what it is and it'd be nice if someone would write it into the article.69.86.126.190 (talk) 12:31, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The biological definition of colonial is very simple actually - everything that is composed of multiple multicelled organisms is a colony. So how do we find out, whether multiple parts of the colony are not just organs in the first place? We compare it with other close relatives and if we find freeliving organisms there, that resemble the parts here, voila, we have a colony. Also the fact that these parts are more or less replicated - with specializations maybe, but still visibly similar - gives us a strong clue that its a colony of multicelled organisms. Thats about it - I see no reason to discuss forth and back whether or not a multicelled organism should itself be called a colony (as it is not). Also, the parts of a colony obviously need not to be able to live independently. I'd remove that statement alltogether and btw. the article about the Physalis physalis should really be left alone, as there is nothing wrong with it concerning its description of Physalis sp. as a colony - as it is one; if anything needs to be fixed, it is this article. Harald Nowak, University of Vienna, Department of theoretical Biology, 2014-02-08  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.88.19.103 (talk) 12:41, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  What's the definition? 

message: I came here to check the exact definition of a colonial organism & discovered I knew more about it than Wikipedia did, so I’ve attempted to take the bull by the horns.  I’ve reworked that section, following essentially the framework given by Dr. Nowak above.  I made the self-similarity the primary criterion & the evolutionary similarity the secondary mostly because it was easier to write that way, & also because one could in theory imagine a clade in which there didn’t happen to be any free-living relatives known to science.  I also cleaned up the bacterial colony (now generalized to microbial colony) section.
I’m not an expert, so there might be fine points that need tweaking, & I’ve hedged in some places (in particular: do colonial organisms necessarily show at least rudimentary differentiation into two or more component types? I threw in a “typically” on that.)  But I am a biologist & am sure we’ve got it basically right now, unlike previously.  And anyway, we have our expert attention in the form of the talk page entry from Dr Nowak.  So I’ve taken the liberty of dropping the “expert attention needed” box. Gould363 (talk) 03:32, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reworked colonial organism material 

message: The text of the article as it is now is confusing and self-contradictory. There needs to be a more clear distinctions made between parts of the article discussing colonies of social animals, colonies of microorganisms, and colonial animals made up of zooids. It may even be best to separate these topics into their own articles.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8804:8280:4160:CD1E:A26C:D0EC:456B (talk) 18:44, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Topics need to be separated.