Denial of evolution III

[Billy T]

...please explain how the bees could have possibly evolved this ability. The ability to transmit the information through ambiguous dance by one bee, and the ability to interpret the intended message by another bee would have had to evolve simultaneously. What are the chances of that happening?

I don't know how for sure, but compared to many other evolution evolved things making a guess at that is easy (if you know a little about how bees see the world).

Almost all creatures, even some single cell ones become more active when they get lucky and find some good food. So long ago bees returning from successful trip no doubt wiggled around more vigorously on the honey comb surface and many other bees knew they had found nectar. Probably several of them follow the "lucky bee" out on its next trip. Soon many were dancing around of the comb and to avoid collisions they tended to move in much the same directions which no doubt for thousands of years had no reference to the sun's angle, but surely almost immediately was influenced by gravity.

Bees have eyes that can see way out into the UV (Flowers, which are all equally white to you, have different UV colors for the bee.) Bees bring back pollen, their only source of protien to make new bees from in little bags on their hind legs and that shows, especially when back in the sun's UV, the color of the flowers current rich with nectar to the bees following along with the "lucky bee." Thus you quicky have many bees going to the good nectar location, even without following the "lucky bee."

BTW, I raise a hive for 1.5 years and every one should if they can - a wonderful educational experience, especially if you read books about the bee.

A few more things you need to know about the bee's eyes - they are very sensitive to the direction of polarization of light and all the light not coming directly from the sun is polarized to some extent. (Take a polarizer and look thru it at various part of the blue sky on a cloudless day - at angles far from the sun, ~90 degrees, that blue light is highly polarized - at the cross polarization angle of the polarizer, the sky far from the sun will be almost black!)

Another thing about their eyes, is that they don't see images as you do. After I read this, I moved my hive only a few feet to the side. - Soon there was a cloud of confused bees in front of the old location - they could not see the hive less than three feet away!

Summary of these bee eye facts: Bees use the polarized light (there even on cloudy days) to know where to fly - it is their guiding light, for a "bee line" to good nectar flowers even a mile away form the hive. In other words, the bees always know where the sun is - it is the unpolarized light direction in the sky.

So the two most important things that guide a bee are gravity and the sun angle. That is why they code the dance. Probably in the early evolution of this means of communication inside the hive, some / many bees did not understand that the dancing bee was telling others where the good flowers were with its dance. Those that did were probably better survivors and more numerous in swarm that left the hive the next spring. Soon (many thousands of years) the meaning of the dance was in their genes. -Just like the meaning of a smile is in yours (and all the other primates).

As I said at start, this may not be fully / exactly how it happened, but given that the bee's eyes make the angle wrt to the sun location the main thing it sees and they like all non-aquatic creatures, bees are very aware of the gravity direction, so those two vector are used in the dance information code. That is to be expected - it is all they have got, direction wise!

 

[spidergoat]

I started off a believer in some sort of god. I remember as a kid considering the complexity of the human eye, and knowing that god must exist in some form to have created this miraculous equipment. As I got older and more educated, I became an atheist in practice/agnostic in theory. In the case of evolution, a basic understanding of science showed me that complex life is a natural outcome of the laws of the universe, and the more I learned of science, the more sure I became of this fundamental truth. Or so I thought anyway. I never realized how big of an assumption I was actually making- not until a few months ago.

To those of you here who still believe in evolution.... it doesn't matter the quantity or quality of scientific understanding you pile on, if it all sits atop an incorrect assumption... the assumption that the [unprovable] inter-species evolution can be extrapolated from the [provable] intra-species natural selection.

I just came across an interesting video which actually motivated me to come post here again on sciforums:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NtegAOQpSs&feature=player_embedded

If this video is accurate, please explain how the bees could have possibly evolved this ability. The ability to transmit the information through ambiguous dance by one bee, and the ability to interpret the intended message by another bee would have had to evolve simultaneously. What are the chances of that happening?

Insects use all kinds of communication, it evolves gradually. The behavior of dancing and the behavior of interpreting the dance evolved at the same time, because worker bees are all genetically identical. The queen bee that gave birth to the colony need have no knowledge of dancing or interpreting the dance. It's just that the bees that could, say, give a certain movement to denote any quality about the food they found and be able to respond to such movements would have a survival advantage. Naturally, there is a gradation of improvement possible about the quality and precision of the information that could be encoded.

The flaw in your thinking is in thinking that species is some kind of absolute quality or class. It's just a human invention. There is no special barrier present to prevent speciation, and you would have to suggest one in order to discredit the overwhelming proof of the explosion of species over time.

 

[Ophiolite]

Probably in the early evolution of this means of communication inside the hive, some / many bees did not understand that the dancing bee was telling others where the good flowers were with its dance. Those that did were probably better survivors and more numerous in swarm that left the hive the next spring. Soon (many thousands of years) the meaning of the dance was in their genes.

I am not too familiar with the division of labour and reproduction in bee colonies. Are you saying some or all of the worker (?) bees are make and therefore potential mates with the queen. I thought they were drones as in many ant species. Would you clarify please.

 

[Billy T]

I am not too familiar with the division of labour and reproduction in bee colonies. Are you saying some or all of the worker (?) bees are make {you mean males, I think} and therefore potential mates with the queen. I thought they were drones as in many ant species. Would you clarify please.

No. Workers definitely are not males. The "worker bees" are genetically females, like the queen, but in their late larval stage (I think) they did not get "royal jelly" so they did not become fully developed queen bees. The males are the drones. The hive keeps at least few dozen drones at all times but not too many as I don't think they do any work.*

If a new queen is raised, for example to lead a swarm away in the spring, she will make her "maiden flight" high into the sky with most of the drones chasing her. Only the strongest will keep up with her and eventually mate with her. This gives her a life time supply of sperm - last for several years. That drone will die. I am not sure why, but think it is like a worker bee sting causing that worker bee to die. I.e. life critical parts pulled out in the process. Two or more queens in the hive are mutually hostile and at least one would be killed by the other, except when the hive wants to swam** or in early stage of being an unfertilized queen - see next pararaph as to how a few dozen queens can be in the hive.

If you kill or remove the hive's queen bee (and some bee keepers who specialize in selling queen bees do this) nothing will happen in the hive for a day or two (not sure by memory of exact delay). Then panic sets in. Most of the late larva stage will be given Royal Jelly to allow their full sexual development as queens. I am not sure of the details, but when you buy a few pounds of bees to start a hive, I think the queen supplied (in a separate, protecting part of the package) has already had her maiden flight but perhaps your pounds of bees include the drone she will mate with?

The bees in the hive, queen included, are constantly exchanging fluids and the fluid from the queen has a unique component (probably some hormone). The way the workers know the queen is dead or remove from hive is that her special component concentration in the mutually exchanged fluids drops below some critical level. Like the meaning of the dance, the meaning of this "chemical communication" is also in their genes. Neither is learned behavior.

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* Bees have no ability to heal injury. In the peak nectar flow time they may only collect in the field for a few weeks as they literally work them selves to death. They live thru the entire winter (going out side when afternoon is warmer to eliminate body waste). Their collective behavior inside the hive in winter switches modes at a well defined temperature, but I skip these details. As the individual bee ages, its job changes. I skip these details too. They have many specialized jobs.

My hive was on a 14 acre wooded lot I owned (Great tax savings*** as that made it a honey farm.) One day when I took my pickup truck to cut up fallen firewood, I first put a little flour on two of the workers with feet locked to the landing strip and wings beating air into the hive (It was a warm day). More than an hour later, with truck loaded up with fire wood for the coming winter, I went back to hive. Those two marked bees were still hard at work. Hive ventilation is one of several dozen different jobs that bees do, but I have no idea how they are chosen for their jobs.

** When swarm(s) is soon to come, the workers divide into separate groups (only one will stay) and each protects its queen. My box of bees came to my house from Wards by postman. The bees did not know the queen was theirs and would have killed her, but there was a metal foil covering a sugar waffer stopper of the exit from her tiny cage. You remove that foil, and as the bees eat thru the sugar waffer, they come to accept her as their queen - I think they exchange of fluids with her when she is still safe but with tiny hole in the sugar makes this happen. Bees from another hive may try to enter and steal honey, but the hive bees know which are the invaders and drive them out (or kill them) - Also by chemical senses they are "flagged" as "not us." It is best to view the hive as the living organism and individual bees are just the cells of that organism. I suspect this may be true of many ant colonies too but I don't know much about ants.

*** I never sold any honey, but did pay tiny amount of sales tax I claimed to have collected to help sustain the fiction it was a honey farm.

 

[RenaissanceMan]

"Evolution." The word is used to express how intelligent beings have changed designs, programs, and behavior. Automobile design has "evolved" since the first motorcars were designed and built. Aircraft have likewise "evolved" from the first wood and fabric airplane flown by the Wright Brothers. Medicine, communications, education, these and many other man-made constructs have "evolved."

The only thing said by biologists to have "evolved" without intelligent design and forethought is of course some imaginary and unnamed single cell thing which is said to have "evolved" ultimately into homo sapiens.

How odd that all "evolution" is intelligently designed, except for its very namesake, Darwinian evolution.

To believe that every living organism arose from some primitive, and unnamed, unidentified single cell is the greatest leap of faith outside of believing that the universe created itself from [ ].

 

[Kennyc]

You are aware that Darwin never used the word "Evolution" til many years after publication of his work.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species

"In January 1871, George Jackson Mivart's On the Genesis of Species listed detailed arguments against natural selection, and claimed it included false metaphysics.[59] Darwin made revisions to the sixth edition of the Origin, using the word "evolution" for the first time,[60] and added a new chapter VII, Miscellaneous objections, to address Mivart's arguments.[61] The sixth edition was published by Murray on 19 February 1872 with "On" dropped from the title. Darwin had told Murray of working men in Lancashire clubbing together to buy the 5th edition at fifteen shillings and wanted it made more widely available; the price was halved to 7s 6d by printing in a smaller font. It includes a glossary compiled by W.S. Dallas. Book sales increased from 60 to 250 per month.[61]"

 

[spidergoat]

"Evolution." The word is used to express how intelligent beings have changed designs, programs, and behavior. Automobile design has "evolved" since the first motorcars were designed and built. Aircraft have likewise "evolved" from the first wood and fabric airplane flown by the Wright Brothers. Medicine, communications, education, these and many other man-made constructs have "evolved."

The only thing said by biologists to have "evolved" without intelligent design and forethought is of course some imaginary and unnamed single cell thing which is said to have "evolved" ultimately into homo sapiens.

How odd that all "evolution" is intelligently designed, except for its very namesake, Darwinian evolution.

To believe that every living organism arose from some primitive, and unnamed, unidentified single cell is the greatest leap of faith outside of believing that the universe created itself from [ ].

Aircraft and automobiles have many hallmarks of intelligent design that are missing in natural evolution. For one thing, a car design can make intuitive leaps of faith. We can suddenly decide to put a jet engine in there, with no precursor steps between an internal combustion engine and a jet engine. Creatures cannot do this, there is always some intermediate step, a gradation of gradual improvement.

To believe that every living organism arose from a primitive, single celled ancestor, isn't faith. It's what the evidence suggests. It's a logical deduction.

 

[iceaura]

"Evolution." The word is used to express how intelligent beings have changed designs, programs, and behavior. Automobile design has "evolved" since the first motorcars were designed and built. Aircraft have likewise "evolved" from the first wood and fabric airplane flown by the Wright Brothers

The aircraft, etc, do not evolve - what evolves is the design ideas and other societal/mental structures.

These evolve, but not by Darwinian pattern alone: also by Lamarckian and other algorithms.

The evolution of aircraft design was not itself designed or created. It just "happened".

 

[river-wind]

Much of these last few posts regarding bee reproduction and evolution is address by Charles Darwin himself in later editions of the Origin of Species. Try the 6th London edition, it's the version I have.

He doesn't get into bee dancing, but does cover the issue of evolutionary pressures on colony species where the majority of individual are sterile.

Hive ventilation is one of several dozen different jobs that bees do, but I have no idea how they are chosen for their jobs.

Not bee-specific, but a recent study of ants showed that younger workers of the studied colony were put to task cutting leaves. However, once their mandibles wore down to the point there cutting leaves became to difficult, they would switch jobs to carrying the leaf bits back to the colony.

 

[tantalus]

Originally posted by spidergoat
is in thinking that species is some kind of absolute quality or class. It's just a human invention

yes this is important to understand and a common misconception, but it is a necessary premise i think, not that it isnt without difficulties, take plant reproduction for example

Originally posted by spidergoat
To believe that every living organism arose from a primitive, single celled ancestor, isn't faith. It's what the evidence suggests. It's a logical deduction

and if I may introduce a little antropocentrism, it is glorious, in a way we are all family, all life

Originally posted by river-wind
Not bee-specific, but a recent study of ants showed that younger workers of the studied colony were put to task cutting leaves. However, once their mandibles wore down to the point there cutting leaves became to difficult, they would switch jobs to carrying the leaf bits back to the colony.

also amazing, you dont have a refernce for it do you? I would love to have the paper,
I am familiar with the waggle dance of the bee, a great example of physical language from a surprising source

 

[Billy T]

... I am familiar with the waggle dance of the bee, a great example of physical language from a surprising source

Then you probably would like to know more about it, how the bee sees very differently from you*. Read: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2661308&postcount=10

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* Your white flowers have bright colors to it; Bees see sky polarization, but no images, etc.

 

[twr]

You can't deny evolution, it's an observable phenomena, not a theory.

Granted, the scale that it occurs on is technically debatable (not if you actually know anything about biology, but o.k.).

Evolution doesn't really contradict anything that most major religions preach anyway (at least, not more than they've contradicted the Bible in order to make Christianity appear more 'humane').

 

[Saquist]

I have to correct this.

Parts of evolution are observable phenomena. Macro evolution has never been observed. It is inferred and thus theoretical. Evolution is a "best guess" of how life continues to develop. There are many unanswered questions when it comes to it's process and that is another area of theory. The theories of evolution are as numerous as all the questions about life. No matter how many theories are purported, written and speculated the only true answer is; "We don't know."

“To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”~Henry David Thoreau


According to the bible:
God created all life according to their "kinds" and they reproduced and filled the Earth according to their "kinds". This is a static statement of non compatibility. It's tenuous to maintain this statement if the kinds keep evolving into different kinds.

Theistic Evolution is the belief that God set in motion life and has not interfered with that process since. Is it compatible? If it was then the Genesis account of the creation of the first man would be at best a story meant to teach a moral lesson, not to be taken literally. Yet that's not how Jesus viewed Genesis. "Did you not read," said Jesus, "that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh. Therefore what God has yoked together let no man put apart." Jesus quoting from Genesis Chapter 2.

Luke's account traces Jesus' lineage all the way back to Adam. If it was myth then at what point does the list become fact? If they understood the roots as myth then what claim does Jesus have as Messiah born in the Line of David?

Paul also considered the Genesis account as having a literal impact on us saying: "Since death is through a man, resurrection of the dead is also through a man. For just as in Adam all are dying, so also in the Christ all will be made alive." If Adam were not literally the forefather of all mankind, the one through whom "sin entered into the world and death through sin", why would Jesus have needed to die to undo the effects of "inherited sin"?

 

[D H]

I have to correct this.

Parts of evolution are observable phenomena. Macro evolution has never been observed.

This is standard creationist malarky. Speciation has been directly observed. It has been observed in fossils many, many times over.


You are correct that what TravisW wrote does need to be corrected.

You can't deny evolution, it's an observable phenomena, not a theory.

Just because lay people misuse the word "theory" to mean a haphazard guess does not mean that scientists do the same. Theory has a special meaning in science. Scientific theory, not observed fact, is the pinnacle of science. A scientific theory is of course bolstered with lots and lots of facts. It is however the theory that explains all the myriad facts. Without the underlying theory, those facts would be useless bits of trivia. Evolution is a scientific theory, and one of the best ones there is.

 

[synthesizer-patel]

You are correct that what TravisW wrote does need to be corrected.

Just because lay people misuse the word "theory" to mean a haphazard guess does not mean that scientists do the same. Theory has a special meaning in science. Scientific theory, not observed fact, is the pinnacle of science. A scientific theory is of course bolstered with lots and lots of facts. It is however the theory that explains all the myriad facts. Without the underlying theory, those facts would be useless bits of trivia. Evolution is a scientific theory, and one of the best ones there is.

actually you are both right - and both require a little correction.

evolution is indeed an observable fact - consequently even most of the most pant-shittingly insane creationists (as opposed to the ones who are merely insane) beleive it does take place - albeit in a rather wierd way - either incredibly fast to account for all of the new species that would have had to arisen from the limited number of species noah would have been able to fit on the ark - or they beleive that only micro-evolution within the species occurs but somehow it knows when to stop before speciation can occur - they can't seem to agree with each other on which yet.

The Theory of evolution gathers all of the observable facts and explains the mechanism by which it takes place.

so it is in fact both a theory AND a fact

 

[Saquist]

This is standard creationist malarky. Speciation has been directly observed. It has been observed in fossils many, many times over.

You should know I'm not a Creationist. I am Theistic. The difference being that I do NOT believe the World and All the Universe were created in 6 - 24 hour days as Creationist do.

Speciation from fossils is hit and miss. It BOTH maybe true and may not be true. Many things that look alike don't actually have true DNA connections and since most fossils dated in millions of years are devoid of long enough DNA strands to make a proper link we have only visual evidence....But that is only evidence that supports and doesn't not prove the link. After the discovery of DNA most or almost all of our expectation of relations were thrown off and new standards were adopted. The Fossil Record is on the only concrete datum we have of the past but it's incredibly incomplete on DNA data and total percentage data. Even if we had the DNA data we still do not have the knowledge to determine decipher it's complete meaning. I look forward to that time in human understanding.

So with all due respect this isn't malarkey. Such a description is an emotional appeal. What I attempt is a purely factual argument of the current situation of information we have on life and contradictions between science and theistic concerns. Minus the Theistic prejudices, minus the Atheistic over speculations and prejudices.

You are correct that what TravisW wrote does need to be corrected.

Just because lay people misuse the word "theory" to mean a haphazard guess does not mean that scientists do the same. Theory has a special meaning in science. Scientific theory, not observed fact, is the pinnacle of science. A scientific theory is of course bolstered with lots and lots of facts. It is however the theory that explains all the myriad facts. Without the underlying theory, those facts would be useless bits of trivia. Evolution is a scientific theory, and one of the best ones there is.

Judicial and Scientific Rules

PROOF is observable reproducible Facts.
EVIDENCE in it's broadest meaning is anything which can support a claim.
SUPPORT defines speculation based on evidence.
CONJECTURE is baseless speculation

No Theory Based on another Theory can be considered properly supported. The Denial of Evolution isn't illogical. Considering just the evidence at hand Creation and Evolution are both logical possibilities but they are not analogous to each other. One is purpose the other is statistical probability.

 

[D H]

The denial of evolution is the epitome of the illogical. There is no logic, no science, no value in creationism.

 

[Saquist]

One may derive confidence from logic but logic is not composed of insolence, pride, ego or hubris. Logic... is incapable of making qualitative value judgments. It has no agenda. Logic is inference and deduction, it is unbiased, objective and substantial by knowledge alone.

Evolution is a theory, however supported that theory is logic dictates where there is a lack of knowledge there is also a directly proportional probability of error. The status of "One" is occupied by only the most unmitigated facts. Therefore for as long as Evolution remains unproven the truth is undetermined, the possibilities must be excogiated.

 

[James R]

The theory that the Earth is round and not flat is just a theory too. Therefore, as long as the round-Earth theory remains unproven the truth is undetermined. The possibilities must be excogiated (whatever that means - is that a real word?)

 

[ElectricFetus]

Yet we can see the earth is round via simple experiments and satellite images, and yet we can see evolution is true via breeding, genetic mapping, actual speciation events observed in controlled settings, etc, what is the difference?