Autonomic communication focuses on distributed systems and management of network resources at both the infrastructure level and the user level. It is distinct from autonomic computing, which is more oriented toward application software and management of computing resources, although both share the same goals. Autonomic communication research probes into fundamental rethinking of communication, networking, and distributed computing paradigms, to deal with the complexities and dynamics of modern networks. Many researchers, including the authors, are looking to self-organization in nature - in colonies of insects, for example - for lessons they can apply to self-organizing autonomic communication networks.