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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 31 Aug 2014 17:02:41 -0400
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> Individuals DO adapt.  Each of us adapts...when the weather gets hot, we adjust. 

This isn't the sort of adaptation we were discussing. That's adapting in the sense that chameleons adapt to their surroundings. That is an ability of that particular individual. Adaptation in the evolutionary sense refers to phenotypic variation which causes the population to replaced by the new phenotype as the less fit variants die out. 

Such as the classic case of dark colored moths becoming the dominant variety in a sooty environment. But those individuals are not the same individuals as the white moths, who disappeared because they got eaten. This is a new lineage which was selected due to the fitness of dark color. 

This is what is generally referred to as adaptation, though as I said, the term has teleological connotations which skew its meaning. The dark moths did not become dark in order to blend in with their surroundings, they got a lucky and inherited a gene variant which produce dark color. 

PLB

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