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Date: | Sun, 28 Nov 2021 09:39:25 -0500 |
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> I don't think bees nor ants are altruistic, nor do they perform self sacrifice. They have no "self" to sacrifice, they are running out genetic programs over which they have no control.
I agree that it's a bit of a stretch, but it's a wildly used descriptor that eusocial insects engage in self-sacrifice, especially during cooperative immunity. But since there are no words for some eusocial behavior, we barrow what we can. Another more agreeable term may be apoptosis ( programmed cellular death), which is less anthropomorphic but still inaccurate. One could even argue that using superorganism and eusocial to describe insects is a stretch. Language fails us consistently, but it's all we have. In this paper both terms are used throughout with the qualifier “analogue”.
> Altruistic suicide of immature bees constitutes a social analogue of apoptosis, as it prevents the spread of infections by sacrificing parts of the whole organism and unveils a novel form of transgenerational social immunity in honey bees
Page, P., Lin, Z., Buawangpong, N. et al. Social apoptosis in honey bee superorganisms. Sci Rep 6, 27210 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep27210
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep27210
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