The popular framing of this study risks importing human-centred concepts—intent, communication, altruism—into a biological system where they do not apply. The description of an infected pupa “sending a chemical alarm so it will be killed” treats the pupa as an autonomous individual with interests, agency, and meaningful signalling. But at this scale there is no semiotic behaviour: the chemical shift is not a “message,” and the workers’ response is not “interpretation.” It is non-symbolic coordination within a biological value system.
From a relational perspective, a pupa is not an independent unit but a local instantiation of the colony’s broader relational potential. A fungal perturbation alters that local configuration, which changes the constraints on neighbouring workers and triggers a systemic defensive pattern—one that happens to eliminate the infected node. Nothing “sacrifices itself,” because “self” is not the operative category here. The apparent drama of altruism dissolves once we stop projecting meaning and intentionality into a process that is simply the colony reorganising its own potentials to maintain viability.
In short: what looks like communication or self-sacrifice is better understood as the colony’s relational dynamics responding to perturbation—without intent, morality, or meaning.
