DanArmak comments on When does heritable low fitness need to be explained? - Less Wrong

15 Post author: DanArmak 10 June 2015 12:05AM

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Comment author: DanArmak 11 June 2015 07:09:44AM 0 points [-]

This is true, but it's not the same as in bees: there, it is in the interest of each worker not to have children and raise its sisters instead.

Comment author: Ano 11 June 2015 07:51:52AM -1 points [-]

No, it isn't.

Workers do not have the ability to choose whether to be a queen or not. That choice is made for them when they are raised. A larva cannot feed itself royal jelly. And it should be obvious that given the choice, a worker would always choose to be a queen. After all, you're related to the existing queen (she's usually your mother or your sister), but you're even more related to yourself, so anything that increases your own reproduction at her expense is a good thing. Conversely, workers, given the choice, will almost always raise other bees as workers, because they are always more related to the existing queen than to her offspring.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 12 June 2015 01:40:14AM 3 points [-]

Workers do not have the ability to choose whether to be a queen or not. That choice is made for them when they are raised. A larva cannot feed itself royal jelly.

No, from the point of view of their genes they are given a signal, they get to choose whether to obey it, i.e., a hypothetical mutation that causes the larva to develop into a queen even if not fed royal jelly doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be hard to spontaneously happen.

Comment author: DanArmak 12 June 2015 09:19:16PM 1 point [-]

Wikipedia says here that workers are 75% related to their sisters. They would only be 50% related to their own children after mating with an unrelated male. So mutations that cause larva to grow up as queens without royal jelly are actually deleterious. If workers were fertile, they would still evolve not to lay eggs while the queen is alive.