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FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend and concludes this weekend on EO Wilson’s paper on eusocial insect evolution. The transition to eusociality is the concern of his thinking in this work, and he methodically traces the options and arguments. Here is a leading ant biologists deducting evolutionary history from the available facts, a beautiful piece. View in LinkedIn

GENETIC VARIABILITY. “Greater genetic variability in the workforce, and hence lower relatedness, can be favored by group selection. In the harvester ant Pogonomyrmex occidentalis, for example, colonies with greater genetic variation have overwhelmingly higher rates of growth and reproduction than those with less variation. This rise in fitness may be due to the enhancement of labor division by spreading tasks among workers with genetic predispositions to specialization.” https://lnkd.in/drgWvGT View in LinkedIn

This is almost all we need to know about our planet. " " https://lnkd.in/dSRsurj View in LinkedIn

TRANSITION MADE. “Passing the point of no return. The rerouting is programmed to remain part of the phenotypic plasticity of the alleles that prescribe the overall ground plan. This origin of an anatomically distinct worker caste appears to mark the “point of no return” in evolution, at which eusocial life becomes irreversible.” https://lnkd.in/drgWvGT View in LinkedIn

THE CARELESS SPECIES. “Currently, only 7% of the ocean is protected. The ocean covers 70% of the Earth.” https://lnkd.in/dBm_ige View in LinkedIn

EARLY TRANSITION. “In the earliest stage of eusociality, the offspring remaining in the nest would be expected to assume the worker role, in conformity with the preexisting behavioral ground rule inherited from the pre-eusocial ancestor. Subsequently, a morphological worker caste can emerge by a further genetic change in which the expression of genes for maternal care is rerouted to precede foraging, thus reversing the normal sequence in the adult developmental ground plan of the ancestor.” https://lnkd.in/drgWvGT View in LinkedIn

Fabulous and abundant wild garlic crops are carpeting the woods just now. View in LinkedIn

SUPPOSEDLY IMPOSSIBLE NEGATIVE MASS. “The crucial breakthrough by Mbarek and Paranjape is to show that negative mass can produce a reasonable Schwarzschild solution without violating the energy condition. Their approach is to think of negative mass not as a solid object, but as a perfect fluid, an otherwise common approach in relativity.” https://lnkd.in/dBWe6d4 View in LinkedIn

THE TRANSITION STEP. “The only genetic change needed to cross the threshold to the eusocial grade is possession by the foundress of an allele that holds the foundress and her offspring to the nest. The preadaptations provide the phenotypic flexibility required for eusociality, as well as the key emergent traits arising from interactions of the group members. Group (colony-level) selection then immediately acts on both of these traits.” https://lnkd.in/drgWvGT View in LinkedIn

Simply hard not to get excited by spring. Time for Vivaldi. View in LinkedIn