PART III: ENERGY AND VALUE

Chapter 12: Surplus and Genes

1. The first reports that life flourished in the deepest parts of the ocean stunned biologists. Because the energy that gives life to virtually all previously known organisms can be traced back to sunlight, no one knew it could be derived from something else.

2. The existence of hydrothermal vent communities demonstrated that energy -not just energy in the form of sunlight - is the universal driver of life's processes. Life is the process of using energy to convert raw materials into information.

3. A bumblebee hive is a living system shaped by one central purpose: gathering enough energy to ensure the survival of the bumblebees' genetic information. In a sense, individual bumblebees are not complete organisms; the colony as a whole is the real organism.

4. The life cycle of the bumblebee colony hinges on one economic fact: the individual worker's ability to gather more energy on each flower commute than it consumes.

5. The division of labor in a bumblebee colony might appear to be the result of organized cooperation, but it is not. The "organization" of a bumblebee hive is merely a consequence of individual specialization.

6. The logic of the economic environment dictates competition by scramblingfor food rather than competition by territorial aggression.

7. Just as direct competition among plants for pollination service is reduced by the staggered timing of their blooming periods, head-to-head competition among closely related bumblebee species is limited by subtle differences in their anatomies.

8. The survival of every bee species rests upon an intricate relationship between an anatomy that minimizes energy costs and a behavior pattern that maximizes energy revenues.

9. The stark reality of bumblebee existence - and the existence of all living things - is shaped by the unrelenting drive for an energy surplus, by the overwhelming imperative to eke out enough profit to reinvest in the creation of the next generation of life.

10. Despite their great beauty and delicacy, all of nature's elaborate contrivances of bumblebee anatomy and behavior come down to nothing more than a way of turning profits into information.