Colony (biology)

“ It has a rosy color, and, being very small, it looks, until one examines it closely, more like a thick red carpet of soft moss, than like a colony of animals. These communities are distinct in sex, the fertile individuals in each being either all male or all female. In Fig. 100 we have a portion of a female colony, representing one fertile head, in which the buds are crowded with Medusæ; one sterile head, surrounded by its wreath of tentacles; and still another member of the society whose office is not fully understood, unless it be that of a kind of purveyor, catching food for the rest. ”

“ The new colony will have eight frames of brood, comb, etc., three from the nucleus and five from the old colony, a young fertile queen, plenty of bees, those of the previous nucleus and the young bees from the old colony, and will work with a surprising vigor, often even eclipsing the old colony. ”

“ I have spoken to some practical farmers, who have not the slightest doubt that the colony posseses every capability, both for agriculture and grazing, and though the pasture lands on this side of the hills are not extensive, there is an unlimited tract behind them, and at no great distance. ”

“ The members of one society or colony, however numerous or dissimilar they may be, are the descendants a single pair. The colony is—so far as is known, and on this, as well as on many other points, authentic information is scanty—first started by a pair of winged individuals that cast their wings, secrete themselves in a suitable place, and produce young; the colony, however huge, being subsequently developed by the extreme productivity of the reproductive pair. ”

“ When a colony, capable, from the fertility of the soil and abundance of moisture, of supporting a dense population, has been settled by a civilised race, they are never long in establishing a communication with the sea-coast and with other countries. ”

“ Happily it does not occur frequently — once or twice only in twenty years. It seems like a vast colony of emigrants from a nation overstocked, a discharge of animals from the northern hive which once poured forth its myriads of human beings upon southern Europe. ”

“ In many cases, a large number of such simple individual organisms are associated together, forming a floating colony, and it is highly probable that many other forms, with whose scattered skeletons we are alone acquainted, had in life formed part likewise of a colonial organism. ”

“ They repair the nest, excavate passages, collect food, feed the larvæ, take the pupa into the sunshine, and perform every office which the welfare of the colony seems to require. They conduct themselves entirely as if fulfilling their original destination. ”

“ These animalcula seem not to like to dwell in societies, whose number exceeds fifteen; when the colony happens to increase in number, the bell may be observed to split gradually, beginning from about the middle of the upper extremity, and proceeding downwards towards the bottom, till they at last separate and become two colonies, independent of each other. ”

“ So does every nation advance over its own territory. Each new clearing in the surrounding forest is the seat of a colony. The trapper and fur trader of the early days in North America were continually founding stations ever farther in the interior, which proved the nuclei of fresh settlement. The pioneer squatter of Australia is still moving into untrodden regions. Such colonies are like grasses, which are sown by the wind in a myriad separate plants, but become contiguous and form the carpeted turf. As reproduction is discontinuous growth, colonization is discontinuous expansion. ”

“ Here, as in the other genera, the colony consists of three kinds of individuals—males, females and workers or neuters, and is founded usually [1] by a single female somewhat improperly called the queen. She, with perhaps several other females, is the sole survivor of a colony of the previous season, and has passed the winter in some warm crevice or sheltered corner. During the first warm days of spring, she may be seen seeking a suitable nesting-place and, this found, she begins the construction of the nest, which has the appearance represented in the accompanying figure. ”

“ First, she may secure adoption in a small queenless colony of an allied species. Here she is fed, lays her eggs and the resulting larvae are reared by the strange workers. Eventually the alien workers die off and leave the queen and her own workers as an independent and sufficiently established colony, capable of rapid and often enormous multiplication. ”

“ It multiplies by fission, and forms a number of distinct individuals which have the curious habit of fusing their pseudopodia and uniting into a more or less closely associated [23] colony. The individuals sometimes remain at a distance from one another, but sometimes associate themselves together into a compact colony. These individuals are all alike, performing the same functions. There is no division of labor among the units, but they live practically an independent life. If the individual animals were detached from one another, they would live and build new colonies. ”

“ It seemed to be the solution to their problem of survival. Small, trial colonies were established. Communication with the space ships from home was achieved.
The experiment was a success.
The trouble was that each colony's existence depended on the life of the host. When the animal died, the colony died.
Life on the planet was savage. New colonies would, of course, be passed from individual to individual and generation to generation of the host species. But the inevitable toll of attrition from the violent deaths of the animals appalled this gentle race. ”

“ In places where large colonies flourish, an immense number of eggs or embryos must be discharged into the water during the spawning season, and of these only a minute fraction can survive long enough to found a new colony. ”

“ The most convincing proof that the Northmen never founded a colony in America, south of Davis strait, is furnished by the total absence of horses, cattle, and other domestic animals from the soil of North America until they were brought hither by the Spanish, French, and English settlers (p. 218) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. ”

“ They are, then, not organs of those Polyps. Can they be organs of the colony? It is already understood that the colony has the character of an individual, and the transformation we seek to demonstrate is admitted. But how can a colony acquire organs? Whence can they arise except from a transformation of the individuals which compose it? We have no need of hypothesis, however, to demonstrate that these colonial organs are the equivalents of true individuals. The buds that give birth to the different sorts of individuals in a colony of Hydractinia all grow alike, and remain ”

“ Whenever the number of workers becomes sufficiently large to warrant a division of the colony, a young queen is reared by the workers and just before she matures, the old queen leaves with about half of the workers to establish a new colony. This division of the colony is called swarming. If a hive, box or other acceptable home is not provided soon after the swarm comes out and clusters, [116] it may fly to the woods and establishes itself in a hollow tree where the regular work of honey gathering is continued. ”

“ If a colony is strong and has plenty of brood and honey and is still obstinate, men of experience advise the taking of a frame of sections from a colony which is storing in the supers and putting bees and all in the midst of the unused super of the reluctant colony. ”

“ In this colony, sir, every laboring man of ordinary capacity may, in a few years, become proprietor of land sufficient to supply all his wants, by laboring upon it for thirty hours in the week. I am persuaded that it is only necessary to make the capabilities of our magnificent colony known, to insure us a large influx of emigrants. ”

“ Industrious, saving, intelligent and persevering, with good land, plenty of water at all times of the year, and with a good location which insures health and comfort, there is no reason why they should not succeed. The colony is most beautifully situated on high sloping ground,—a veritable mesa land overlooking the vast Merced plains, and only four or five miles distant from the city. ”

“ If enemies did not keep down the population of a colony so situated, it was only a question of time until the scarcity of the food-supply compelled the colonists to move either up or down stream and start anew in a place where food trees could be obtained. ”

“ A weak colony may frequently with advantage be added to another, or three may be made into two. And not only may this be done with new swarms, but in autumn, when there is no brood in the combs, it may be carried out also with stocks, the combs that are extracted being taken care of for use when required. ”

“ The idea of a colony in Africa, as the term colony is usually understood cannot be entertained. English races cannot compete in manual labor of any kind with the natives, but they can take a leading part in managing the land, improving the quality, in creating the quantity and extending the varieties of the productions of the soil; and by taking a lead, too, in trade, and in all public matters, the Englishman would be an unmixed advantage to every one below and around him, for he would fill a place which is now practically vacant. ”

“ Upon them devolves the whole labour of the colony; they rear the young, guard the entrances, elaborate the wax, collect and store the provision, and build the cells in which it is warehoused, as well as those that contain the brood. ”

“ The colony (Fig. 10, A) is a hollow sphere, the numerous green cells of which it is composed forming a single layer on the outside. By killing with iodine, and using a strong lens, each cell is seen to be somewhat pear-shaped (Fig. B) , with the pointed end out. Attached to this end are two vibratile filaments (cilia or flagella) , and the united movements of these cause the rolling motion of the whole colony. Usually a number of young colonies (Fig. x) are found within the mother colony. ”

“ Continuity of English colonization meant little more than that the lands claimed by one colony were coterminous with those claimed by the next, and that no other European nation could plant a settlement between the Alleghanies and the sea without committing a trespass and fighting for its place. There was no continuity of what would now be called effective occupation. Colony was divided from colony by many miles of forest and backwood. ”

“ A colony is to the mother-country, as a member to the body, deriving its action and its strength from the general principle of vitality; receiving from the body, and communicating to it, all the benefits and evils of health and disease ”

“ Second, the poorly endowed queen may establish herself in a colony of another species, but be unable, even after her workers have matured, to survive the death of the host colony, except, perhaps, by migrating to another nest of the same species. ”

“ But if the surface of the deep be calm, and the rafts are carried along by a current, or wafted by some slight breath of air fanning the foliage of the green trees, it may arrive, after a passage of several weeks, at the bay of an island, into which its plants and animals may be poured out as from an ark, and thus a colony of several hundred new species may at once be naturalized. ”

“ Third, the queen may enter a small colony of alien workers, and, when attacked, massacre them, appropriate their larvae and pupa?, carefully secrete and nurse them till they hatch and thus surround herself with a colony of young and loyal workers that can bring up her brood for her without any drain on her food-tissues. ”

“ The flats or plains near the stations are seen animated by immense droves of cattle, revelling in all the luxury furnished by a rich herbage. This part of the colony may be correctly termed a land flowing with milk, and even, we may say occasionally, with honey, as the latter is sometimes procured by the native blacks from the hollow trunk of a tree; by watching the direction in which the bees fly when proceeding homeward, and following them, they thus discover [261] and rob the industrious insects of the “sweets of their life.” ”

“ The Reviewer humorously calls this colony "a land of convicts and kangaroos," and sportively observes, that, "in this remote part of the earth Nature (having made horses, oxen, ducks, geese, oaks, elms, and all regular and useful productions, for the rest of the world) seems determined to have a bit of play, and to amuse herself as she pleases. ”

“ The social ants and bees are divided into castes, and the existence of hydroid colonies, which are structurally united into compound organisms, presents the conditions which are most favorable for specialization among the members of the community. We accordingly find among them the most remarkable examples of division of labor, accompanied by structural specialization or polymorphism.
A young dysmorphosa colony consists of a creeping root, which carries a number of hydras, all of them like a in the figure. They are the eating and digesting members of the society. ”

“ The growth of a colony there might be trained according to one general system with a view to various combinations of soil and climate and not left to chance as in old countries or, which would perhaps be worse, to the partial or narrow views of the first settlers. ”

“ Reproduction.—The formation of colonies by gemmation has frequently been mentioned above. The young buds of a colony arise from the endoderm canals in the body-wall of the zooids, in the general coenenchym, or in the stolon. They never arise from evagination of the coelenteric cavities of the zooids. There is no evidence that fission of a colony to form secondary colonies ever occurs. Gemmation leads to the increase in the number of zooids forming a colony, but not to an increase in the number of colonies. ”

“ Having been guarded for generations from any admixture with a lower type, the colony gradually increased in numbers, and the time came when it was ready to receive and to hand on the new impulse to physical heredity which the Manu was destined to impart. ”