The genetic explaination for the presence of queen bees

    Evolutionary Psychology (Brody)
    • Welcome to the BOL Forum on Evolutionary Psychology by John Grohol, 3/19/97
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        • God and Bees by Tom Smith, 12/1/97

    The genetic explaination for the presence of queen bees
    by Christina Athena Aktipis, 12/20/98

    As Tom brought up, it is fascinating that certian species such as ants and bees have queens. He expressed interest in the gentic basis of this type of social structure and later suggested that god holds a similar place for humans as queens do for certian insects. I argue that the presence of queens can be explained in purely evolutionary terms and that god does not function in any way as a sort of "queen" for the human race.

    The genetic basis for the presence of queens is the following: Bees and ants are known as hymenoptra. Hymenoptra are unique in that females have twice the amount of genetic makeup as males do. Males pass on all of thier genetic makeup to thier offspring while females only pass on half of thiers. Male offspring only inherit half of thier mother's genes and have no fathers, while female offspring inherit half of thier mother's genes and all of thier fathers genes. This results in a .75 coefficent of relatedness (degree of genetic similarity; a coefficent of 1 would be identical genes) between female offspring. (Relatedness between female and male offspring is intersting but complicated and not important for the arguement. Female offspring share only .25 of thier genes with thier brothers but males share .5 with thier sisters.)

    The important point here is that female offspring have a .75 coefficient of relatedness with thier sisters, while they would have only a .5 coefficient of relatedness with thier own offspring, if they had offspring. The structure of having a queen bee evolved because female offspring who cared for thier sisters more than thier offspring would increase the chances of thier genes propagating. Genes that 'coded' for that type of behavior would be selected for and become part of the evolved psychology of such species.

    (However, females also evolved to care for thier brothers to some degree, otherwise the passing down of genetic makeup would have been impossible. The sex ratios of certian species is another interesting an somewhat related issue that can be explained genetically, but it is not worth addressing here.)

    Since there is a clear genetic reason for the presence of certian species with queen bees, I don't see how one can consider god to be the 'queen bee' of the human race. A metaphor couldn't even extend that far.


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