Diving into the world of colonial organisms, one is hit with a myriad of scientific jargon straightaway: zooid, bryozoans, siphonophores, polymorphism and the list goes on and on! But what are they?

Colonial organisms (i.e. colonial animals, colonial-forming animals,  superorganisms) are animals that are made up of many individual organisms, of the same species, that are attached together to form a colony. The individual organisms are called zooids, and they are not able to live on their own, outside of the colony structure. The rely each other for survival.

There are some species where all of the zooids within the organism are identical clones of each other. There are other species where each zooids fulfills a different need for the organism as a whole: each category of zooid works together to make sure that the organism is protected, fed, is able to navigate, etc. Siphonophores, one type of colonial organism, have zooids that have evolved to catch food, other zooids work to protect the organism, and others still handle navigation and swimming so that the organism can move around. This idea of a species having different types or forms is referred to as polymorphism.

I found this paradigm particularly linked to the excerpts from adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy. Several times brown brings up biomimicry, which is the “imitation of the models, systems, and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems.” She even uses the example of ant societies as one of the principles of emergent strategy where individuals act collectively to survive. While ants don’t fit the definition that of colonial organisms, in that they aren’t attached, they are certainly organisms that live in a colony and act for mutual benefit of their society.

As mentioned above, some colonial organism zooids produce identical clones of themselves. Corals, bryozoans and other species however create offspring which are genetically similar but not identical. These offspring are recognized by the parent colony as “kin cells” as Lara Beckmann notes in The Fascinating Lives of Colonial Animals. “Only cells with sufficient genetic similarity are accepted – others are not welcomed and will be rejected.” By evolving to combine with other colonies, instead of just reproducing identical zooids, these colonial organism species increase their genetic diversity. This may be why these colonies “grow faster, are more resilient against environmental threats, and that competition with less closely related neighbours is reduced”.

As I continue to explore colonial organisms within the context of kinship, I wonder if kinship that we see in human relationships is another early form of biomimicry, or is it another example of an evolutionary habit that the human species has adopted.

Landfills are basically places where trash or other forms of disposable waste are gathered and buried as a means of storing garbage. It involves a process of digging a hole (really of any size but generally quite large) and once the hole is full of trash it is then covered with soil or other materials such as wood chips or sand. They can also be used for other purposed such as a pile to sort trash into different categories (example trash vs recycling) or for temporary storage before the contents are moved to a more permanent location. 

The type of landfill is usually determined by its contents. Some landfills might be designated for chemical or industrial waste while other might be for nuclear, household, or toxic waste. The waste is typically compacted prior to dumping in the landfill as a means of adding both stability and increasing the amount of waste that can be put into a given landfill hole. 

Landfills tend to be the most common form of large-scale waste disposal since they are efficient (in that you can store a lot of material in a relatively small area through compaction) and allow for a degradation cycle of the garbage contained in the landfill. Certain material may be grouped together to allow bacteria, fungi, and other microbes to process and dissolve the waste contained within the landfill.

Some common issues associated with landfills are: groundwater contamination (particularly with landfills in areas with high rainfall), landfill gases (several types of gas form within landfills and they can be toxic to the surrounding land and air), carbon/methane emissions, spread of diseases (through rats, mice, and other wildlife that may travel to the landfill in search of food), loss of habitat (landfills require a lot of space), odor, noise, destabilization/soil liquefaction (since landfills are compacted trash, they can degrade and destabilize during earthquakes causing the soil to collapse, potentially creating sinkholes and contaminating groundwater).

Landfill regulation changes based on country/region/state. They are rich in materials and energy and are often harvested for those purposes. There are usually taxes and other municipal regulations that determine how much a landfill will cost to build and maintain as well as how they must be managed, contracted, operated, expanded, etc.