Quote:
Originally Posted by Guybrush
Most biologists would generally say that an anthill is comprised of selfish individuals that cooperate in a way so that everyone benefits. Or even more accurately, a group of cooperating selfish genes that use ants as their vehicles to take them into the future. This is generally what you would expect to emerge from natural selection.
Where that is not readily apparent and animals seem to act in an altruistic manner, there generally are interesting explanations why that is, such as the aforementioned haplodiploidi. A gene that increases the fitness of other genes at the expense of its own fitness will get weeded out over time by natural selection. Hence, altruism, while it may appear for various reasons, is not stable, but selfishness is. For general evolutionary theory, that should be the basic expectation. [B]What looks like altruism tends to be either selfishness in disguise, a misplaced gamble or a selfish strategy in a situation which it is no longer ideally adapted to, making it altruistic and unstable.
|
I think some of the confusion comes from the language being used. To describe 'genes' as selfish is very different than to describe a person as selfish. Yet the later is the way we understand that term colloquially.
Like for example EO Wilson brings up how ants are programmed to leave the nest and die alone if they are injured, to no longer burden the colony with maintaining their existence. This is the exact opposite of what humans refer to as selfishness if you are breaking it down based on the best interest of the individual. It's clearly not in that individual ant's best interest. It's a sacrificial act that benefits the colony as a whole. You might say it benefits the specific genes the ant is carrying but then again, genes have no real agency and thus when we describe them as "selfish" it means something very different from the common parlance.
Quote:
|
For ants, science seem to say their ancestors were monogamous and this (along with haplodiploidity and a few other factors) would promote evolution into eusociality. When polygamy arises as a later characteristic, it can mean that eusociality is no longer stable and that these colonies are in fact being invaded and disrupted by selfish, exploitative strategies as we speak.
|
I have to say I'm not that clear on the distinction between monogamy and polygamy in ants. As far as I understand one queen typically lays all the eggs so are you saying that in the case of polygamous ants she is impregnated by multiple drones and lays eggs from each of them??? Or how does that work?