On 18/10/2011 7:40 PM, Kate Miller wrote:
> >This discussion seems to forget that evolutionary advantage would be for the species, not the individual.  Sure, the drone has a pretty low chance of fathering a line of queens, but the variety of genetic material is of benefit to the colony (the super organism) and thus>the species, survival of the fittest was never about an individual bee!

Well many think it is just that.  Certainly Gould et al were into group 
selection but the idea is still contentious.  I for one (not that that 
is significant)cannot concieve how it can be anything other than the 
individual, in the case of honey bees, the queen who heads the super 
organism, and if the hive is succesfull, to a lesser extent the drone(s).

Geoff Manning

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