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"Even bees, a tiny insect that MUST behave out
of entirely genetic pre-determined Ethograms" instead of learned behavior, as
evinced by the change in dance due breeding.
Then we have the "well-documented intrabee variation
in dance" which goes to the question of "Inter-observer Reliability for independent
replication "
Then I asked "What is a single son in the Bee community?"
I admitted fear upon reading that this evidence
suggests "a series of alleles" ...which displays a "dominance hierarchy reminiscent
of that known from the mouse agouti locus."
A tip of the hat to why they throw out the " next
most parsimonious explanation" because of the relative frequency counts of their
phenotypic-behavior specially bred bees.
And as an ultimately important question when ascertaining
the veracity of their results, "How did they identify and keep track of the
F1 generation?"
My post opened up with the observation that this
University-funded research continues now for probably more than thirty years
beyond the original classic studies (mentioned in encyclopedias and repeated
in countless "Discovery Channel" type TV programs), and yet the research still
seems to "bee filled" with uncertainties and possibly contradictory results.
We're supposed to feel great about the State of
Science because we "map the human genome" yet we still remain mystified by bees.
In terms of the Nature vs. Nurture controversy,
the book claims a resolution; i.e. that all (scientists) now believe in a mixture
of nature and nurture.
This illustrates how much science depends upon good
questions, and Nature vs. Nurture probably never qualified as a top-flight question.
This work is licensed under a Creative
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E-mail: Mark Plimsoll