Bee's are a product of many millions of years of evolution, so the why, is that it works!
Ever watch bees?, bugs?, other things, up close and in the danger zone? I do. A bee's stinger will embed in you, or me, and then the venom sack rips right out of the bee and it is possible to watch the venom sack pump venom without the bee
itself attached anymore.
I was attending my mother in her herb garden and commented on there bieng honey bees around, which she disputed, so I caught one, and held its legs
while it tried to sting me, and showed her this,
but my hands are so callused, that its stinger would not go in, then I let it go. She says I am an improbable creature, and describes me bieng a half Vulcan and half Klingon.
Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)
71–80 of 251 posts
Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is a perfect example of what your parent comment is talking about, being: > unprovable, unfalsifiable, and have the same circular logic as bad religion. You said: > There is no contradiction here. They evolved as the fittest in their own constraint set. If bees weren’t fit enough, they would have gone extinct and replaced by bees with non-barbed stingers. There is no magic that makes them survive. Sure,…
How is it circular to argue why one species would do better in an environment than another based on phenotype and the physical interactions it enables? It’s all relative to other species. As long as you understand that, there is no logical fallacy. I do very much appreciate the focus on informal logic though.
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.
Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's an explanation of how this works: All creatures are very complicated. Thus reproduction doesn't produce perfect clones, "mutations" take place. This is largely because there are so many different ways to derive one individual out of two individuals' complex genitic material. This is all a feature. This is why individuals have unique characteristics. Think about how different humans are from each other, even th…
If your answer is "it's a random mutation" then that settles the "why" question permanently. Why all this idle speculation about bee's stingers, then? It was a random mutation, and it survived, done.
It was random, and it survived.
Every single part of an organism goes through a recombination/mutation process countless times, the stinger evolved to be what it is today over a very long time and it's cool to study why it ended up the way it did. Tells us about their environment and history and evolutionary pressures, survival is a result of the random traits being successful in their context in specific ways.
Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)
#74The concept of indirect fitness must be more complicated than explained here. The article explains it as a worker bee sharing 75% of her genes with her sisters, but only 50% with a child, so there is selection pressure for workers to be sterile and self-sacrificing. But few genes actually differ between individuals, so the percentages are much higher. E.g., I share ~ 99% of my genes with each one of you reading this. Assuming honey bees' genetic variation is not much more extreme than human variation, we're talking about 99.5% vs. 99.75% sharing, which sounds more like an explanation of why altruism would be preferred in general rather than uniquely affecting bees.
The article does eventually circle around to acknowledge this, but it's easy to miss and very underdeveloped compared to the discussion of kin selection: "So why do bees die when they sting you? Perhaps because they're disposable parts of a larger super-organism which has evolved by multi-level selection."
Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)
#75I don't understand why any "why" question in evolutionary biology is ever satisfied with a "survival of the fittest" truism. Any evolutionary explanation you give me is also falsified by the existence of another species with a different/opposite trait. Whatever explanation you give for a bee's barbed stinger is falsified by the wasp's non-barbed one. Also doesn't answer other questions, such as why didn't bees evolve…
Survival of the fittest is the flawed quote, usually used by those with supremacist conceptual frameworks (that there can be an objective “better”, etc). This shows up a lot in fiction, where the quote is used as justification for cruelty, atrocities, and the like. IMHO, the much better quote is: > It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most…
It is not only the best adapted class that survives, aka the "fittest." They only need to be good enough to survive and reproduce. In other words, the principle should be stated as "survival of the good enough." I know it doesn't roll off the tongue as well, but is more accurate.
Perhaps, survival of the fit. (period)
Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wasps and bees have different ecological constraints with different risks involved. There is no contradiction here. They evolved as the fittest in their own constraint set. If bees weren’t fit enough, they would have gone extinct and replaced by bees with non-barbed stingers. There is no magic that makes them survive. Evolution doesn’t have any goals or agenda. That’s why whales still have vestigial hip bones despite…
I think this is a perfect example of what your parent comment is talking about, being: > unprovable, unfalsifiable, and have the same circular logic as bad religion. You said: > There is no contradiction here. They evolved as the fittest in their own constraint set. If bees weren’t fit enough, they would have gone extinct and replaced by bees with non-barbed stingers. There is no magic that makes them survive. Sure,…
"Fittest" is what we call those who happen to survive in their context. Systems that successfully replicate themselves in their context tend to stick around. Those who can't, go extinct. We obviously still study why they survived. That's what the article speculates about. So yes, in a sense, any organisms you see is the "fittest" in the sense that it was able to survive (replicate) in its context while countless others were not.
Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not entirely true. For example, being gay is hypothesized to give an evolutionary advantage because you can provide care for your sibling's children, who share their dna with you. Same goes for early menopause. That can extend to small villages where individuals may give up their own resources for a greater survival chance of their kin within the collective.
Pre 1800, the average life expectancy was aged between 20-40 [1]. I think the menopause is something that was experienced by extremely few people until after then. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
Average life expectancy is misleading. You want perhaps median life expectancy after the age of 20.
Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wasps and bees have different ecological constraints with different risks involved. There is no contradiction here. They evolved as the fittest in their own constraint set. If bees weren’t fit enough, they would have gone extinct and replaced by bees with non-barbed stingers. There is no magic that makes them survive. Evolution doesn’t have any goals or agenda. That’s why whales still have vestigial hip bones despite…
I think this is a perfect example of what your parent comment is talking about, being: > unprovable, unfalsifiable, and have the same circular logic as bad religion. You said: > There is no contradiction here. They evolved as the fittest in their own constraint set. If bees weren’t fit enough, they would have gone extinct and replaced by bees with non-barbed stingers. There is no magic that makes them survive. Sure,…
> The connection graph between "They survive because they're the fittest" and "They must be the fittest because they survive" is just a circle disconnected from all other knowledge.
The GP said that bees survived because they're "fit enough" not that they survive because they're "the fittest" and there are definitely species that don't seem to be surviving because they're not fit enough.
Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)
#79I don't understand why any "why" question in evolutionary biology is ever satisfied with a "survival of the fittest" truism. Any evolutionary explanation you give me is also falsified by the existence of another species with a different/opposite trait. Whatever explanation you give for a bee's barbed stinger is falsified by the wasp's non-barbed one. Also doesn't answer other questions, such as why didn't bees evolve…
What kind of explanations are you looking for? Your idea is that there should be some sort of common explanations of why.
I guess because these are theories and best guess based on the evidence. There are many unknowns but that doesn't mean we should disregard what we know.
Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)
#80This concept blew my mind when I internalized it. Same reason why honest signals exist. A peacock with very rich feathers is a fitness disadvantage. But they find mates more successfully. These traits persist in the gene pool. It’s so much easier to just evolve a cheating trait that does the job of finding a mate even without the required fitness. But the signals stay honest for the most part. Why? It’s because ultim…
I think you are missing a few points. First, is the adversarial nature of mate selection. A female peacock who falls for a trick will have fewer offspring that survive. The discerning hen will do better. Honest communication works because it is backed up actual fitness. It doesn't require group selection. Second, I think there is a lot more going on with respect to taxes. Taxes have existed for maybe 10,000 years. An…
> Taxes have existed for maybe 10,000 years. An armed man demanding half your stuff or they kill your family is a tax too. Same for a mature lion that eats what another animal killed. I would argue taxes are an inherent result of power imbalances among humans. Differences give rise to power differentials, which give rise to security concessions, which consolidate into kingdoms and nations
Tax fits the model pretty well. Defending against bandits who steal everything and move on is expensive, so kings that claim much smaller portions of wealth and scare off bandits tend to lead to better nations. (Then you've got modern democracies, that typically tax much more, but in a way which is actually compatible with higher growth because the money tends to be spent back into the sluggish parts of the economy rather than spent on zero sum competition with neighbouring kings/lords over territorial tax bases and precious import collection)