"An example: the default for any fertilized bee egg is to become a drone."

This reminds me of the philosophy question "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it did it make a sound?"  Frankly, I always considered this question bull shit.  Actually I would like to use stronger language but this is a family forum.  Now the bee consideration is not nearly as bad as the tree question, but in both cases the answer is largely a matter of a persons point of view.  An epigenetic change induced by some feature of DNA coding can easily be argued to be genetic.  In other words I do not think there is a "right" answer to the question are all bees born male (or female, or some mix of male and female).

And, the important thing is not to argue philosophy anyhow.  The important thing is to understand the interplay of the various factors that end up giving a worker, queen, diploid or haploid male, etc.  If we understand those things then deciding what sex that fertilized egg is really does not matter.  However, I will defend Randy for saying what he said in his article.  As an author he needs to get peoples attention and get them to think about what they are reading.  So, putting out the statement above accomplishes that wake up call for those who are capable of waking up and does serve a purpose.  I just think after we have awakened it is time to move past that opening statement and get into the meat of the topic.

Dick


" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

             ***********************************************
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