Summer here and the heart turns to..laziness. Earlier this month I came back from my last project for a while. It took something out of me and Im just taking it easy for a while and so I thought I would put a bit more effort into my posts here again.

I decided to start a thread on Darwinism. Just in the title I am somewhat making my point. I will explain. A lot of people (certainly the majority) in the field have taken to calling it "Neo-Darwinism". This title emphasizes the gaps in Darwins theory, the largest being that he didnt know the MECHANISM for his theory to work, genes. But outside of that, a lot of people are impressed by how LITTLE Darwin had wrong, and if "neo" is used at all it needs a particularly small "n"..not a capital. I leave it out.

On to the point.. a lot of people have attacked or dismissed Darwinism on this very board..in this very section. "A mere theory" .. "A guess".. and worse.

So, Im going to talk about different types of evidence. Rather than simply list proofs..rather boring..I will give nice, story-like examples that illustrate the depth of the evidence, the huge variety of interconnectedness it explains, the utter lack of any other viable explanation.

For my my first example Im torn between two examples. One Ive talked about before but dont mind writing again.. haemoglobin. The other example Id like to write about and open up to discussion is "Hymenoptera".. ants, bees, and wasps (but not termites).

So.. shall we talk about blood or ants and how they show evolution?

Having written a program at UNI that demonstrates swarm intelligence, I find ants fascinating. So my vote would go with Ants, but I will go with the flow.

This post has been edited by Dundee: Jun 24 2008, 06:10 AM

I doubt there will be more than one or two votes.. so I will probably do ants.

Thats cool!

Yes i like ants,they are quite fascinating.

Ok.. bees, ants, etc it is. Before I get into the meat of my post I want to talk about several small interesting facts of these creatures.

Lets start with a honeybee and their sting. Basically a honeybee when it stings is commiting suicide.. rather than a comparison to suicide bombers I think Japanese "kamikaze" are a better example. If youre a creationist or a critic of Darwinism.. a critisism comes quickly. HEY! Kamikaze behaviour is NOT compatible with trying to pass on one's own offspring! And in fact suicidal behaviour seldom evolves. Is there an explanation? Yes, in fact there is. Only drone honeybees sting. Drones are sterile. There best way to ensure their genes are passed on is to protect close relatives. And we find only in social, sterile insects do we find such suicidal, "altruistic" behavior. If one doesnt believe in evolution.. there is no reason to think this should be true.

Moving on..honey pot ants. Among honey pot ants there is a caste of workers with food packed, huge abdomens. They hang from the ceiling being used like refridgerators by the other workers. Their identity is totally subjugated to the group. But again, as in the case of honeybee drones, this lifestyle has no chance at all of passing on their genes. So..if evolution is correct we would expect this class of ant to be sterile as well. And? Yes. They are. If these ants were simple programmed by a god or whatever there is no particular reason to believe they would need to be sterile. Its only if the body is having to make energy investment "choices" that it can be understood. (Obviously no conscious choice is being made, I am using the word loosely).


These are social insects.. and social insects have developed a unique evolutionary strategy.. that is theoretically viable but only used by social insects.. instead of all individuals being bother "bearers" and "carers".. they divide up. Some individual are bearers..some are carers. Bearers are the reproductive males and females. Carers are the workers.. sterile males and females (termites) or sterile females (all other social insects).

But the charge is often thrown.. "HEY!! Whats in it for the workers??" Some people have said flatly "nothing".. but that it wasnt contrary to evolution because the workers are being manipulated by chemical means to do the queens selfish whims, caring for her offspring. This is the idea most of us have when we think of an ant or bee colony..the queen lazing way punching out offspring while the rest of the colony works to keep her happy..much like the relationship between me and my ex girlfriend.

A few people answered the opposite.. that in effect the workers are sort of "farming" the bearers. The offspring of the queen is not their direct offspring, but they are close relatives.

In the field of evolutionary biology..neither answer sounded totally satisfactory.. Then one day a brilliant man (named Hamilton.. I forget his first name...) realized in a "Eureka" moment that the WORKERS might actually be more closely related to the queens offspring than the queen herself! And it is this that makes the whole system of these insects make sense.. and again, only in a Darwinian aspect. From any other point of view it simply looks like a made up mumbo jumbo with no reason. Once we provide Darwinian context, it all fits together quite nicely.

I will explain. Insects in the group Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps as I mentioned yesterday) have a strange sex determination system. A hymenopteran nest has only one queen (mature queen anyway). She made ONE mating flight when young and stored up the sperm for the rest of her long life (10 years or so). She rations out that sperm over the years..allowing eggs to be fertilized as they pass out of her tubes. Not all the eggs are fertilized. The UNFERTILIZED eggs become males. That means a male has no father and his body contains just one set of chromosones, all from the mother.
A female hymenoptera is normal, however. Like other animals she has a double set of chromosones..one from mother and one from father. Whether the female develops into a worker or a queen is NOT genetically determined..its determined by her upbringing (especially which food she eats). In this, by the way, is an important thing to remember when reading newspape articles about how a gene for this or that is found.

We dont know why, yet, this odd system came about. But the net effect is that it plays havoc with figuring out "relatedness". For example, all sperm from a male will be identical because all males have only one set of chromosones..the sperm wont be a mix and match of the two different sets. So, if we try to figure out how closely a mother and son are related.. Lets say a male has GENE X. What are the chances his mother has it? 100%. Because the male had no father. In reverse, lets say the queen has GENE Z. What are the chances the son has it? 50%. Because he only received 1/2 her genes (he received one set, but the queen as a female has two sets of chromosones). Its not a contradiction.. the male gets all of his genes from his mother, but only gets half of hers. A male has only half the normal number of genes. So from the queens point of view, offspring whether male or female are equally related to her.. having 1/2 her genes.

Still with me? Sorry this isnt easier..this is maybe why science loses the battle in the public arena sometimes..it cant be condensed to sound bites. But we are getting to the fun part, I promise.

Lets move on to "sisters"..the daughters. Full sisters not only share the same father: the two sperm that conceived them were identical in every gene (an individual males sperm are all the same). So full sisters are essentially identical twins, genetically speaking. If a female has GENE X and she got it from her FATHER, then her SISTER must have it. If she got it from her mother then it its 50-50 whether her sister has it. So unlike most animals where sisters share 1/2 their genes, hymenoptera sisters share 3/4 genes.

The result? Hymenoptera females are more closely related to their full sisters than they are to their own offspring of either sex.

If this is true, and evolutionary theory were correct.. what would be the predicted result? A gene for making sisters will replicate itself more rapidly than a gene for making offspring directly, as a female who "farms" her mother for more sisters will produce more of the same genes. Hence, worker sterility evolved. Inside hymenoptera, true sociality and worker sterility evolved 11 times.. in the whole rest of the animal kingdom? Just once (termites). Again, inside the context of Darwinism (and by the way, mathematics and game theory) this all comes together nicely. Naturally. Remove Darwinism and once again..there seems to be no reason at all.

There is a catch, however, in what Ive laid out. IF the workers are to successfully "farm" their mother (to reproduce their genes)..they must somehow curb her tendency to give them an equal number of brothers. Why? Because from the point of view of a worker, the chance of your brother sharing any particular gene is only 1/4. So..if sisters and brothers are produced in equal numbers the "farm" doesnt make a genetic "profit" from the workers point of view...they wouldnt be maximizing the production of their own genes.

So where does that leave us? The workers, if Darwinism is correct, need to try to bias the sex ratio in favor of females. Rather than 1:1 (as in most species) the stable ratio would be 3:1 (Im not going to show the math here, but to look it up please see Trivers, Hare , and Fisher.. I assume googling will turn up something, if not go to Amazon).

If you are a hymenopteran female, the best way to propogate your genes is to NOT reproduce yourself, but to have your mother make sisters at a 3:1 ratio of sister to brothers. If you MUST have your own offspring (you end up being a queen) the best strategy is to have equal number of sons and daughters. (Keep in mind..this is calculations done in the lab.. basically a testable theory).

This all means there is a conflict of interest down in the ant, bee, whatever colony. The queen it "trying" to invest in equal numbers of sons and daughters. The workers want there to be 3 daughters to every son. So..who wins?

Trivers and Hare did a study (again.. if you are interested I encourage you to research their...well..research). The result? After studying 20 species of ants.. a convincing 3:1 ration.

Unless evolution were driving this we cant explain that. Remember..we did the math first. It was all just theory. IF IF IF. But then you go out ..and the reality matches the data exactly. The workers are not slaves..but rather they "farm" their mother.
This is not too surprising.. workers have more power in practical terms than queens..they gaurd the nurseries. Genes trying to manuveur things for the queen are outnumbered by genes manipulating to favor the workers.

Now that point alone again is astounding. We use mathematics and game theory to work out genetic competition..then we look at the real world and it matches up. We have a nice, neat, rather exciting explanation of what at first seems a weird system.

BUT it gets better. (you in the back..wake up!)

What if..what if..

What if there were a situation in which the QUEEN might have more practical power? What if the genetic manipulating of the workers was somehow neutralized? Would the ration then be 1:1? It should be if Darwinism is correct.

But can we test that?

Well..yes we can. Why? Because some ants TAKE SLAVES! The workers in slave making species of ants do no work at all (or, like a husband trying to escape housework, are very bad at it). What the workers are good at is.. going on slaving raids. Only man and social insects go to war in a true fight to the death (something to ponder..). These workers (we will call them slavers from now) mount attacks on nest of ants of different species. They kill the defending workers and soldiers and carry off the UNHATCHED young. When the young ones hatch, the hatch in the nest of the captors. They dont "realize" they are slaves and they go about doing the work following their in built genetic programs, doing what they would do in their own nests.
The slavers go out and get more slaves..the slaves in the nest do the work.

The slaves dont know they arent related to the queen, nor to the eggs they are tending. They are producing the next generation of slavers.

What this means is that the queen now has the practical power. Her true born children are out of the nursery. The slaves in nursery are doing what they would normally do to create the 3:1 ratio..but it wont work..because the queen is a different species!

So, in slave making species we would expect a 1:1 ration.. and what do we find? Trivers and Hare studied 2 slave making species..and found.. a 1:1 ratio! Once again, we see that clear evolutionary pressure is present, decisively so.

A few other notes before I wrap this up. Note that real, hard science both in the lab and in the field is at work here. Testable ideas are fleshed out and checked. The degree to which predictions match up is noted..and any failings as well. There is a notable exception to what Ive written.. but as well as a reason as to why its the exceptioin.


Note the amazing coincidences that would have to be true if this WERENT Darwinian.. the math says 3:1.. but that math is based on Darwinian genetics.. if it were not true why not 5:1, 2.5:1.. 20:1.. In slave species..why back to 1:1..? why not just stay at 3:1?

Anyway..sorry this is so long. But I wanted to put it out there. As I said before, you see so much "its just a theory", "there is no proof", etc statements made on this board I wanted to give an example of just one way in which Darwinian evolution is just as well known as ..say.. magnetism or gravity.

so has darwin got some of it right and some of it wrong.

Not sure youre reading it properly. Its a total vindication of Darwin. Darwins only major gap was that by not knowing about genes he couldnt know the mechanism.

That is the kind of explanation that would lend itself well to a family tree or some sort of graphical representation. It is a pretty complex set of circumstances. I followed the interrelationships between them, but I got a little lost in how it supports Evolution. I am not contradicting you btw, I am not familiar enough with the formal theory of evolution to understand the supporting evidence.
Also is this ability for an unfertilized egg to develop into something common?

Hmm.. let me see if I can lay it out..in a very bare bones way.

Evolution is all about genes and genes reproducing themselves.

When we talk about bees (for example) we have this problem.. they have one group of bees that work and the other that reproduce. So the question is.. since the workers dont get to reproduce, why should they? Whats in it for them?

But the question gets answered when we look at their circumstances closely. Worker bees get a benefit by creating a situation where there will be lots of worker bees being made. Doing math, we know that populations are in balance when males and females are produced 1:1 (its not as obvious as it looks at first glance by the way..). But bees have a weird system of reproduction. If there were no genetic determinations going on.. there would be no reason, despite the weird reproduction for that balance to be different than 1:1. But in the bees unique system it would be better for genes in workers to favor SISTERS ..not brothers, if there are genetic influences going on..not a cosmic design. And it holds true. The only time it doesnt hold true, is if for another reason, genetic influence of workers is removed.

In other words, by using the evolutionary and genetic model we can predict and well explain population models. yes, evolution is about change and adaptation. Each step here is an adaption, a change in the statistical occurance of certain genes.

If evolution were not true, its models should not be able to predict any of this. But it does.

I remember reading this example in my evolutionary biology textbook last year. It is quite fascinating when the mechanisms of inheritance are laid out, and it becomes apparent why and how such a system can exist.

Unfortunately I fear the only ones who will read this example and try to make sense of it are the ones who already agree with Darwinism.