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Comment posted on talk page for Commandments:
Comment posted on talk page for Commandments:
Seeing as you seem to be our reseden Evolution Expert, I have a Question. How Does Evolution Explain the instinct in bees to only harvest necter from one kind of plant on a given day? According to the survival of the fittest, the bees should be going to the flowers closest to thier hive so as to maximize the amount of necter that they could gather in a day.
Seeing as you seem to be our resident Evolution Expert, I have a question. How Does evolution explain the instinct in bees to only harvest nectar from one kind of plant on any given day? According to the survival of the fittest, the bees should be going to the flowers closest to their hive so as to maximize the amount of nectar that they could gather in a day.
--[[User:ChrisS|Chris]] 21:54, 15 January 2007 (EST)--[[User:CJS|CJS]] 21:43, 15 January 2007 (EST)
--[[User:CJS|CJS]] 21:43, 15 January 2007 (EST)
:I don't want to be "resident evolution expert" if that means I'm supposed to "prove" evolution, or have a pat answer for everything, or anything like that. And, by the way, I love to argue, but I'm a stranger here and ''trying'' to be a polite guest.
:I don't know a specific answer to your specific question.
:So I'm going to answer your question with another question: how can you be ''sure'' that going to the closest flowers is really the best survival strategy? How can you be sure that what they actually do may not be better?
:Scientists have discovered some surprising things. You might wonder why sickle-cell anemia, a genetic disease, persists in African populations. You'd think that according to Darwinism, the people without sickle-cell anemia would be fitter and that over time the population carrying the sickle-cell gene would be selected out. So, does the continued existence of the sickle-cell gene disprove Darwinism?
:It turns out that the gene that causes sickle-cell anemia only does so when there are two of them... and when there is only one of them, it provides protection against malaria! So, in places where there is malaria, there is selection ''for'' the sickle-cell gene. This benefits the population as a whole, because most members of the population only get one gene, so they get malaria protection without getting sickle-cell anemia. Only the unfortunate people who are homozygous for the gene get sickle-cell anemia.
:So, it may not be at all obvious what is really being selected for... in fact it may take a research study to discover it.
:So, with respect to the bees, the real scientist's question: ''how would you find out?'' What experiments could you perform to find out whether it is better for bees to go to the closest flowers than to go to the flowers they actually go to?
:(Pretty feeble, but the best I can do at short notice!) [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 22:24, 15 January 2007 (EST)