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Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

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Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#111

Post by _1tem »

glenstein wrote: post #90
jstanley wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you could encounter absolutely any organism and make the same argument. There is no configuration of organism that would cause you to say "huh, I guess Survival doesn't depend on Fitness after all!" Because it takes the observation of Survival and uses it to infer Fitness, at the same time as saying that Fitness confers Survival.

>Because you could encounter absolutely any organism and make the same argument. That's a function of the explanation being an extremely good explanation. It rises to the top precisely because it has explanatory power all across nature without evident counter-example. >There is no configuration of organism that would cause you to say "huh, I guess Survival doesn't depend on Fitness after all!" This is where the argum…

> It probably feels like it proves too much, because it's confirmed over and over again in nature everywhere, at all times.

No, logically it is proved true because it is assumed to be true and then used to prove itself.

> For starters, species go extinct all the time for reasons tied to their evolutionary trajectory.

Again, this is circular logic. You assumed that the only reason that species go extinct is because it wasn’t fit enough. If you assume survival of the fittest then of course it is true.

Here’s another circular explanation: things are the way they are because God created it that way. This explanation rises to the top precisely because it has explanatory power all across nature without evident counter-example, right?

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#112

Post by wizzwizz4 »

spqr0a1 wrote: post #19

While a bee stinger may get stuck in you, that's not so when stinging fellow insects. The barbs don't catch on an exoskeleton like they do for thick and elastic mammalian skin. An elegant way to deliver more venom to larger targets.

If you're careful with the index fingers of opposite hands, you can remove the stinger from your skin without killing the bee.

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#113

Post by abnercoimbre »

cryptonector wrote: post #109

Honeybee queens are the only honeybees with stingers that don't die when they sting. That's because the queen bee's stinger has no barbs, and the reason for that is that the queen must not die easily, and she must use her stinger, so if she's going to survive at all her stinger has to not have barbs. The queen almost certainly has to use her stinger when she exits her cocoon: to kill ther other queens that are about…

Useful reminder nature is terrifying even at its smallest. I'm a little surprised this wasn't taught to me in school.

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#114

Post by pandemic_region »

prerok wrote: post #86
bornfreddy wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this explains why humans are snoring? It just wasn't / isn't evolutionary important.

Well, the explanation I heard is that snoring provided protection during sleeping to scare away predators. I don't know the source for this theory, so take it with a grain of salt :)

The fact that heavier (and thus more attractive as prey) people are more likely to snore could give credibility to your explanation.

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#115

Post by crazydoggers »

glenstein wrote: post #100
crazydoggers wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Group selection” is not a thing. The article hand waves this always with > some biologists still get really triggered about group selection and deny its evolutionary importance Which is dishonest at best. The vast majority of biologist have realized group selection doesn’t work as proposed. [0] What people thought was group selection was just kin selection working over time. All evolution works at the level of the g…

Agreed, it's a disappointing and discrediting detour in an article that's about a fascinating topic. As you note, this has been worked out via haplodiploidy, which doesn't require venturing into theorizing about group selection or altruism. And just to take a beat, and explain why group selection "triggers" people (in the author's wording), it's because it violates our fundamental, bedrock idea of causality which is…

Yes! To put a finer point on it, group selection theories don’t have a specific physical explanation for how they operate, instead veering into philosophical explanations.

Ultimately natural selection must operate on the gene. Genes are the only source of information that gets passed to offspring through germ line cells in sexual reproduction or mitosis in asexual reproduction (don’t get me started on the fad of epigenetics, which is just a fancy term for standard DNA controlled embryological differentiation.)

The replication of genes and the information they encode, are the physical cause of the effect of phenotypes.

Group selection theorists (of which there are few) have no physical cause that allows selection to occur on the level of the group, and there’s no sound hypothesis of such that I have heard of. You’d need some physical mechanism for information flow between individuals in a group for that to be the case, and outside of kin inheritance, there’s nothing like that that exists.

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#116

Post by shakna »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #112
spqr0a1 wrote: post #19

While a bee stinger may get stuck in you, that's not so when stinging fellow insects. The barbs don't catch on an exoskeleton like they do for thick and elastic mammalian skin. An elegant way to deliver more venom to larger targets.

If you're careful with the index fingers of opposite hands, you can remove the stinger from your skin without killing the bee.

I don't think I've ever been stung in such a convenient position as to allow that.

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#117

Post by teeray »

cryptonector wrote: post #109

Honeybee queens are the only honeybees with stingers that don't die when they sting. That's because the queen bee's stinger has no barbs, and the reason for that is that the queen must not die easily, and she must use her stinger, so if she's going to survive at all her stinger has to not have barbs. The queen almost certainly has to use her stinger when she exits her cocoon: to kill ther other queens that are about…

The queen bee is a formidable final boss with a bad-ass origin story.

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#118

Post by ianbicking »

harimau777 wrote: post #105

Am I the only one who grew up with bees dying after stinging carrying a sort of unspoken significance or meaning? I don't think I ever heard someone actually state it, but growing up I had the feeling that bees dying when they sting you was in some sense "significant" because it meant that bees had to be selective in when they chose to resort to violence. It was almost like an unspoken fable or illustration about the…

It points to another evolutionary pressure that isn't mentioned as often: if an animal is too aggressive humans will exterminate it.

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#119

Post by ianbicking »

cryptonector wrote: post #109

Honeybee queens are the only honeybees with stingers that don't die when they sting. That's because the queen bee's stinger has no barbs, and the reason for that is that the queen must not die easily, and she must use her stinger, so if she's going to survive at all her stinger has to not have barbs. The queen almost certainly has to use her stinger when she exits her cocoon: to kill ther other queens that are about…

This maybe points to another theory (which may be entirely wrong, I'm just guessing!): honeybees die because they aren't supposed to attack each other. Like they can't be aggressively selfish because they'll just die in the process.

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#120

Post by 867-5309 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #112
spqr0a1 wrote: post #19

While a bee stinger may get stuck in you, that's not so when stinging fellow insects. The barbs don't catch on an exoskeleton like they do for thick and elastic mammalian skin. An elegant way to deliver more venom to larger targets.

If you're careful with the index fingers of opposite hands, you can remove the stinger from your skin without killing the bee.

as opposed to index fingers of the same hand..
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