Evolution

[Ely]

I have and is says Gravitation, or gravity, is a natural phenomenon, not an answer, the truth is know man knows or fully understands, string theory has been mentioned but after some extensive reading................no chance !

I just look at how polar molecules are attracted due to positioning of electrons then apply the same logic on a bigger scale. It then seems easy see how huge masses can attract other masses. Not just huge masses actually, we are all attracted by everything, even a pen on your desk, albeit on an extremely almost non existent way.

 

[mbc]

......., we are all attracted by everything, even a pen on your desk, albeit on an extremely almost non existent way.

Lol. I have that trouble too.

 

[Skyhook]

Hard to know what climate was like before the deluge,

Not least because it never happened.

 

[Ely]

Lol. I have that trouble too.

the trip to A eand E was an experience I'd like to forget

 

[Joseph]

2) The Insect Societies by Edward O. Wilson

Wilson is involved in a raging debate on the very topic raised by this post. The question is not really what came first, as experiments have shown that solitary bees will work cooperatively when forced to do so and the simple chicken egg question is hardly a valid one according to evolutionary theory.

Although the queen is genetically identical to workers, DNA methylation has recently been shown to cause the changes we see between the castes. http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000506 so we understand how such changes can evolve.

But rather the question is why did worker bees give up their right to propagate their selfish genes. More precisely, why were early worker bees not out-competed by solitary individuals who did breed, and why don't some workers revert to selfish propagation of their own alleles. This is a huge discussion. This question is for hymenopteran eusocial evolution and everything else eusocial too. It is seen by some the Dawkins vs Wilson controversy or as the Kin Selection vs. Group selection controversy.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/m...est-earth-evolutionary-errors-origin-species/

Wilson in his book The Social Conquest of Earth sees workers as an extension of the queen's own phenotype, which is an interesting way of looking at workers, although he ignores the fact that workers do lay eggs as we all know.

This paper by Wilson gives his side of the story as well, http://bio.kuleuven.be/ento/pdfs/wilson_bioscience_2009.pdf

Darwin himself pondered this question in the Origin. Although precisely what his problem was is subject to debate, and if Rathieks is right (he probably isn't), Darwins problem was more similar (not identical though) to the question posed here in the first place. http://zoo-kfoster.zoo.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/files/Ratnieks2011BES.pdf

 

[Skyhook]

More precisely, why were early worker bees not out-competed by solitary individuals who did breed,

It would seem likely that honeybees would have evolved in a time and place where life was becoming harder for solitary bees, eg when forage was becoming more sporadic due to the climate becoming drier and/or more drought-prone. In this instance, the buffering effect of a colony plus stores and a chance to have some of your genes passed on would be likely to outweigh the possible advantage of passing on all your genes, but the likelihood of passing on none.

This may be supported by the recent research showing that the waggle dance (colony behaviour) gives maximum benefit in areas where forage is more widely dispersed.

 

[Joseph]

It would seem likely that honeybees would have evolved in a time and place where life was becoming harder for solitary bees.

According to kin selection theory that is not required for eusociality to arise, because bees being haploidiploid they are more closely related to their sisters 0.75/1 than to their daughters 0.5/1 in the absence of polyandry, and so they spread more of their own genes through working for a queen who will issue queens, sisters to the workers. Evidence shows that the ancestral state of the honey bee was indeed polyandry. See: Ancestral monogamy shows kin selection is key to the evolution of eusociality. Science, 320, 1213-1216.

Group selection theory does kind of argue that but, but without the need for solitary bees doing really terribly, just that groups do really well, and that is why some solitary bees always did survive. The question then is one of the prisoners dilemma.. for each worker bee.

 

[tonybloke]

thank you joseph.
it's so refreshing to see properly referenced scientific papers used in a debate on here.

 

[Skyhook]

thank you joseph.
it's so refreshing to see properly referenced scientific papers used in a debate on here.

My brain hurts, but I'm better informed now.

.

 

[REDWOOD]

Digesting this in one day is a lot to ask however I now understand the theory and scientific evidence on both sides, who is right, I suppose we will have to wait and see as there is more scientific research unfolding every day to complete the jigsaw, I just hope one day there will be no missing pieces

 

[REDWOOD]

I just look at how polar molecules are attracted due to positioning of electrons then apply the same logic on a bigger scale. It then seems easy see how huge masses can attract other masses. Not just huge masses actually, we are all attracted by everything, even a pen on your desk, albeit on an extremely almost non existent way.

I understand your theory, but polar and chemical attraction is not gravity

 

[Ely]

I understand your theory, but polar and chemical attraction is not gravity

Nevermind, it was just something I was playing with in my head. I'll do some reading on gravity

 

[Skyhook]

Digesting this in one day is a lot to ask however I now understand the theory and scientific evidence on both sides, who is right, I suppose we will have to wait and see as there is more scientific research unfolding every day to complete the jigsaw, I just hope one day there will be no missing pieces

I think that unfortunately there will always be a few missing pieces where you are looking at the fossil records- given that fossils will only form in certain conditions, and that we are unlikely to examine every rock on the planet, we are unlikely to ever see the complete picture.

However, you can do a jigsaw with quite a few pieces missing and still see clearly that it is a thatched cottage, and not two kittens and a ball of wool.

 

[blackcavebees]

"However, you can do a jigsaw with quite a few pieces missing and still see clearly that it is a thatched cottage, and not two kittens and a ball of wool."


Mmmmm, I thought it was boat on the water and a large ice cream, but maybe my jigsaw is upside down?

 

[Joseph]

thank you joseph.
it's so refreshing to see properly referenced scientific papers used in a debate on here.

Why thank you, it becomes second nature after a while..

Redwood, I really don't mean you here, but I think it very wrong when people dismiss hard earned science with a mere hand gesture saying "There are two sides here" not even bothering to look at the evidence which is absolutely overwhelming in this case.

Evolution is not only proven beyond any reasonable doubt, it can be shown to occur and it HAS to occur. Organisms are all different and those individual organisms better suited to their environment will survive to reproduce for longer periods of time such as that in a mere tens of generations advantageous alleles become the norm if environmental conditions stay static according to the maths. It is that simple.

Think about this very carefully. Besides for the levels of strata which show more complex life forms as geological time progresses, in 1953 Watson and Crick discovered the double helix allowing us ultimately to read DNA sequences in the 70's. If evolution did not occur, there ought to be no genetic relationship between species.

So here we were in 1984, when the first complete sequence for any organism was decoded, at a crossroads. It was finally time to debunk evolution once and for all. If once we read the DNA sequences of organisms, there was no more relationship (DNA similarity) between apes and humans than between apes and say cattle, then evolution is gone, dead.

Of course it turns out that not only does our functional DNA show precisely this DNA similarity in functional DNA, we also share vestigial DNA sequences, redundant sequences and virally transcribed sequences.

Most viruses do not transcribe themselves into our genome, occasionally however some does get transcribed into our genome and is passed on to our progeny. These redundant bits of DNA are not harmful, but are clearly identifiable as virus DNA. If your ancestor had such a virus you may have his or her endogenous retroviral DNA sequences in your genome. The more related you are to an individual the more such virus DNA sequences you will have in your genome.

Guess what, we share such sequences with apes, because ape ancestors of ours had such viruses, and the more closely related we are to a species the more of such sequences do we share.

It is true that the fossil record is not perfect, it cannot ever be, but evolution has been proven over and over again by many different corroborating lines of evidence. Why do all living things, use the same RNA codons, why do codons arbitrarily translate to the same amino acids? Why are alleles functional across species, why do we have vestigial organs. And the list goes on and on.

Keep an open mind and you will be overwhelmed!

 

[Suzi Q]

Digesting this in one day is a lot to ask however I now understand the theory and scientific evidence on both sides, who is right, I suppose we will have to wait and see as there is more scientific research unfolding every day to complete the jigsaw, I just hope one day there will be no missing pieces

There is scientific evidence for evolution, but there is NO scientific evidence that disproves the theory, or to prove creationism.

 

[tonybloke]

> Joseph, another lovely post, explaining complicated issues in lay-mans terms, well done

 

[REDWOOD]

Hi Joseph, i would like to say I was not dismissing hard earned science I have the utmost respect for science and the work they do but in some cases there are 2 sides/theories, as you said we share vestigial organs we also share eyes with probably 90% of living things, does this make us related ? One word that has not been mentioned by anyone is mutation, Mutations are the raw materials of evolution which I understand

 

[Skyhook]

we also share eyes with probably 90% of living things, does this make us related ?

Yep. As it happens eyes have evolved more than once, but ALL living things are related. One of my favourite radio moments was a scientist being asked if we are really related to plants. He laughed and said 'well yes, but only very distantly- not as closely as we are to, say, slime mould'

.

 

[Joseph]

Most living things do not have eyes, bacteria for a start, I remember being taught by a lecturer at college that there are more bacteria in a fist size clump of earth than there ever were humans on this earth and that proves nothing.

Vestigial organs are obsolete organs that a species has which no longer perform their original function, the human appendix is thought to be an example of that. In grass eating animals the appendix helps in food digestion.

The best example though of a vestigial organ is leg bones which just sit there inside of a whale's body, and talking of eyes, cave-fish have obsolete eyes which they do not need nor use and they do not work any more.

Such vestigial organs clearly show that the organism have evolved from a former ancestral state.

Advantageous alleles I mention earlier, are the DNA mutations you speak of that are utilised by evolution. We all have around sixty mutations, we all look different, so they do occur perfectly safely.