| From: kelvin | 5/02/00
1:03:30 |
| Subject: Bees and Evolution |
post id:
35282 |
| Hi There This is motivated because my poor field assistant was stung twice in 2 days by bees. It occurred to us that bees are poorly evolved (if that has any meaning). What is the point of having a defence mechanism that kills the user upon use?. Surely it is possible to evolve a better defense mechanism.? Kelvin | |
| From: Monty | 5/02/00
1:06:23 |
| Subject: re: Bees and Evolution |
post id:
35286 |
| They sacrifice themselves to
protect their colony. I think its kinda heroic... but thats just me. | |
| From: Grant¹ | 5/02/00
1:14:01 |
| Subject: re: Bees and Evolution |
post id:
35288 |
Surely it is possible to evolve a better defense mechanism.? I'm sure it is- look at wasps. But for bees it has been effective enough for all this time & if it ain't broke, why fix it? | |
| From: meredith | 5/02/00
11:05:28 |
| Subject: re: Bees and Evolution |
post id:
35345 |
| Dear Kelvin It's not so mauch as the bee having a whopper of a defence mechanism that's a bit of overkill, it's more a matter of the defence not being evolutionarily disadvantageous. For example box jellyfish can kill humans, but they don't eat humans. These animals have thses defenses from way back, the defences weren't a disadvantage, so why change something (in an evolutionary sense) if it works ok?? I don't believe that either the bees or the box jellyfish "developed" a defence just to kill (or hurt a lot), they already had the genes, the genes weren't deleterious, so the genes weren't selected against. Hope this helps, cheers meredith | |
| From: Freezer | 5/02/00
14:46:13 |
| Subject: re: Bees and Evolution |
post id:
35393 |
| The bees with stings in no way
affect the reproduction of the colony, so it's not greatly detrimental to
lose a few of them, that might be one reason they have the system they do,
or perhaps they're still evolving, and in another million years, we'll
have superbees who sting, and sting again, meanwhile lets count our
blessings - or Kelvin your friend might be in considerably more pain than
they are. ~Freezer~ | |
| From: MichaelT | 5/02/00
20:34:50 |
| Subject: re: Bees and Evolution |
post id:
35486 |
Bees sacrificing themselves for the good of the colony is not really an evolutionary disadvantage... I know very little about bees, apart from the fact they are a colonial species like ants. An individual ant/bee means nothing to the hive. They are sterile, so are unable to assist in the future of their genetic makeup in any other way. In the ants case, they spend most of their life in the nest doing internal stuff. Once they are passed their use-by date, they assign themselves to external duty. As they are already old, their death is of no importance to the nest. I wonder if I am right in assuming that bees have the same old-age pension scheme? You also have to look at a hive not as a collection of single entities, but as one single functioning "creature". Cheers, MichaelT | |
| From: Lib | 6/02/00
23:40:29 |
| Subject: re: Bees and Evolution |
post id:
35788 |
| Bees are colonial insects and all
the workers are sisters, therefore, despite not breeding themselves, they
are ensuring the continuation of their genes by defending the hive so
vigorously to the point of sacrificing their lives. My genetics aren't
that great but I think if you work it out all workers will share 1/2 of
their genes with the other workers and future offspring, therefore, the
survival of the queen and her future offspring is actually ensuring the
survival of 50% of their own genes. | |
| From: Kothos | 6/02/00
23:44:43 |
| Subject: re: Bees and Evolution |
post id:
35794 |
I was wondeing, what will be the motivating factor behind human survival once genes become superfluous? What I mean is, eventually we should be able to manipulate our genes with no end right? If we are bron, grow up and then amend our genetic material to be better, or replace it altogether with other genetic material (managing somehow to keep our minds continuous), how will that affect evolution? Is what I'm thinking totally impossible (about gene manipulation I mean). | |
| From: Lib | 6/02/00
23:51:37 |
| Subject: re: Bees and Evolution |
post id:
35800 |
| I don't think the human race is
driven by evolution anymore. We can adapt ourselves to so many different
situations, vaccinate ourselves against diseases etc etc, that I honestly
think we are apart from the rest of the life on the planet in that sense.
What is there that drives natural selection for humans? Disease mainly. A
pandemic could provide a useful selective pressure for evolution, but as
you say, once we have worked out how to manipulate our genes to become
immune to all known diseases and the like where do we go from
here? | |
| From: Martin B | 7/02/00
9:39:49 |
| Subject: re: Bees and Evolution |
post id:
35880 |
| Hi There is still variation in the human species. There is still differentiation in peoples reproductive habits. People still die, at different stages of their life. Put that together and I don't see how you can avoid the conclusion that humans are evolving. Changing the environment around us does nothing to stop evolution. We have been adapting the environment since before we were human, as other species do. You might argue that the natural selection pressures that exist on humans today are leading us down an evolutionary dead end, but that is a very different argument... | |