Natures wonders: bees cooperate just as ants do (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, September 20, 2018, 17:35 (2254 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Automatic activity is not intelligence is my point.

dhw: Of course it isn’t. And my point is that it takes intelligence to solve problems and invent new strategies. So I can only repeat my earlier question: did your God preprogramme every ant and bee strategy 3.8 billion years ago, or did he come down and teach them every time there was a new threat? Or did they work things out for themselves and pass them on to succeeding generations, just as humans do?

TONY: I don't think that either David or myself have ever said that *everything* was preprogrammed.

DAVID: I have proposed that God could have pre-programmed all of evolution, or that He stepped in during the process and made adjustments, which I called dabbling. I've have never decided which one or both, but I feel God ran the entire process of evolution in some way.

I'll add only that I have no idea how termites worked it out, and coupled with God is charge, He played a role. Read this article for a wonderful description of term ite society:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/18/a-giant-crawling-brain-the-jaw-dropping-wo...

In the mound, most of the termites are eyeless and wingless, but the fertile termites who leave the mound on this night have eyes and what at first appears to be one single translucent teardrop-shaped wing. When they are ready to fly, this single wing, still soft and moist, fans out into four. Called “alates”, these termites are like fragile balsa-wood glider planes: just sturdy enough to cruise briefly before crash-landing their payloads of genes.

Male and female find each other and scuttle off to dig a burrow where they will mate. At first the two termites will be alone in their dark hole. Christine Nalepa, Theo Evans and Michael Lenz have written that termite parents bite off the ends of their antennae, which may make them better at raising their young. Antennae give termites lots of sensory information, and biting off the segments toward the ends could reduce that stimulation, making it easier to live in a tiny burrow with a few million children.

After she has laid her first eggs, the queen cleans them often to remove harmful fungi until they hatch as nymphs about three weeks later. The nymphs will moult grow and develop, but under the influence of the queen’s pheromone, most of them won’t fully mature, remaining permanent stay-at-home preteens – eyeless, wingless helpers.

Males and females alike will spend their time gathering food, tending eggs, building the nest deeper into the ground and eventually tending a fungus. As the family grows bigger, some morph into soldiers; their heads grow larger, dark-coloured and hard in a distinctive way, depending on their species. Thereafter they must be fed by their siblings the workers. Soldiers appear to return the favour by dosing the colony with antimicrobial secretions that help it resist disease.

dhw: I’ll watch with interest as you discuss your differences! There is an ongoing discussion between David and myself concerning the intelligence of other organisms. I believe that when, for instance, ants build rafts, design cities, develop farming techniques, solve problems set for them by researchers, they use their intelligence. Once a system or technique or strategy has proved successful, it will be passed on. In fact some studies show ants teaching other ants. Even with this bee example, there seems to be intelligent cooperation between the bees, and some sacrifice themselves for the sake of the colony: “By climbing, individual bees have to shoulder a greater workload, but the bees seem willing to do this for the greater good of the swarm." I suggest they know what they’re doing.

I propose they are automatic as based on observation. How can they make decisions if blind and simply working by feel?

TÓNY: In https://www.quora.com/Are-bees-and-ants-close-on-the-evolutionary-tree It breaks down a list of creatures bearing one similar feature, a narrow waist. An because of this narrow waist, they MUST be related. [...]
Bees are bees. Ants are ants. Wasps are wasp. However, it is worth noting the similarities and differences between the species, because the closer you look, the more you realize that ancestral evolution between these three species is not really possible because the evolution's would have to be bi-directional, both in terms of anatomical and behavioral "adaptions".

dhw: I don’t know why you have changed the subject to evolution. We are talking about intelligence versus automaticity. I can only say that in the dispute between common descent and separate creation of species, I consider the similarities between bees, wasps and ants to be evidence of common descent, and can well believe that diversification will have occurred over millions and millions of years and generations and changing environments. (See also under “Junk DNA".)

Phenotype comparisons are not as important as gene studies of relationship. Phenotype is old school.