BEE-L Archives

Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

BEE-L@COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Peter Loring Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 12 Apr 2018 12:12:21 -0400
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (27 lines)
> The beekeeper harvesting ½ to 2/3 of the hives applied strong selective pressure. It is likely aggressive hives would be one of the 1st chosen for harvest.  

The beekeepers harvested the heaviest and the lightest one, leaving the average ones. But honestly, the idea that they somehow influenced the phenotype via this process is unsupportable. You have no data.

> Unless a trait leads to positive selection, by nature, or by the beekeeper it will not last.... nearly ½ the colonies are negatively selected a year and replaced by new genetics.

Many mutations are neutral and are retained because they do no harm, -- they are not lost. Much of genomics relies on these neutral markers and the phenomenon of genetic drift. Genetic drift means that populations can be genetically quite different but without significant effect on survival. Deleterious mutations, on the other hand, tend to eliminate themselves, leaving the status quo -- not "new genetics." 

The status quo is very strongly maintained because the bulk of the genomic material has to be intact and fully functional in order for the organism to be born and survive at all. Any change in the program is most likely to either do nothing, or to do harm. Very rarely, a mutation will confer some benefit and then only if it spreads throughout a population. If the beneficial mutation is not passed on to multiple generations, it will not produce a lasting effect.

It seems like everybody these days has an opinion on "genetics" and what the potentials are for beneficial change. Most of these opinions are based on inadequate understanding of the underlying principals. 

Dr. Laurence Loewe (School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.) explains:

> Mutational effects can be beneficial, harmful, or neutral, depending on their context or location. Most non-neutral mutations are deleterious. 

> To better understand the impact of mutations, researchers have started to estimate distributions of mutational effects (DMEs) that quantify how many mutations occur with what effect on a given property of a biological system. In evolutionary studies, the property of interest is fitness.

> It is extraordinarily difficult to obtain reliable information about DMEs, because the corresponding effects span many orders of magnitude, from lethal to neutral to advantageous; in addition, many confounding factors usually complicate these analyses. Many mutations also interact with each other to alter their effects; this phenomenon is referred to as epistasis. 

https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/genetic-mutation-1127

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

ATOM RSS1 RSS2