Category: Uncategorized

UNACCEPTABLE. “We cannot make artificial life because we cannot agree on what life is. We cannot find life on Mars because we cannot agree what life represents. This is intolerable for any science. You can take a science in which there are two or three definitions for one thing. But a science in which the most important object has no definition? That’s absolutely unacceptable.” https://lnkd.in/gNSZgDT View in LinkedIn

LARGE STRUCTURED SOCIETIES. “Why has eusociality been so successful? The well-documented answer is that organized groups beat solitaires in competition for resources, and large organized groups beat smaller ones of the same species.” https://lnkd.in/drgWvGT View in LinkedIn

REVERSALS. “Evolution in the reverse direction is easily conceivable, and very likely occurred: adaptation to a broader array of food plants set the stage for multiple generations, and thence for overlapping generations in the same nest.” https://lnkd.in/drgWvGT View in LinkedIn

TRANSITIONS. “Exactly what kind of group selection drives the species across the threshold? Concrete examples of this adaptation and the transition it affords are provided by halictid sweat bees and polistine wasps. In one recently documented case, two species of sweat bees that switched from collecting the pollen of many plant species to collecting pollen from only a few plant species also reverted from a primitively eusocial life to a solitary life.” https://lnkd.in/drgWvGT View in LinkedIn

WORKER CASTE. “Altruism and eusociality are thus evidently born from the appearance of a phenotypically flexible eusocial allele (or ensemble of such alleles) in a progressively provisioning mother, and from group selection acting on emergent group traits, which are socially binding and sufficiently powerful to overbalance the dissolutive effects of individual direct selection. One small step, so to speak, for a newly created worker caste, one giant leap for the Hymenoptera.” https://lnkd.in/drgWvGT View in LinkedIn

BROOD TIMING. “Simultaneous progressive provisioning, by which multiple larvae are reared at the same time, is especially potent as a preadaptation in the Hymenoptera. From this wholly solitary adaptation, it is but one short step in evolution for adult offspring to remain at the nest and help their mother raise siblings, instead of dispersing to rear brood of their own. In that generation the eusocial colony originates. Then and thereafter, group selection proceeds, uniquely targeting the emergent traits created by the interaction of the colony members.” https://lnkd.in/drgWvGT View in LinkedIn

PREADADAPTATION. “The key preadaptation for eusociality in the social Hymenoptera is progressive provisioning, a behavior that in solitary species arises by individual direct selection.” https://lnkd.in/drgWvGT View in LinkedIn

TASK ALLOCATION. “When two or more individuals interact, those with the lowest threshold are the first to begin the task. The activity inhibits their partners, who are then more likely to move on to whatever other tasks are available. Thus, once again, the group impact of a single phenotypically flexible allelic change that inhibits dispersal from the natal nest would seem to be enough to carry preadapted species across the eusocial threshold.” https://lnkd.in/drgWvGT View in LinkedIn