Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Ants working and the non working type

voxday.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/the-lesson-of-p-punctatus.htmlThe lesson of p. punctatus

Immigration advocates never seem to take into account that the putative benefits of immigration depend entirely upon the characteristics of those entering the society en masse.
In a recently published paper in PNAS Early Edition, Dobata and Kazuki Tsuji demonstrate what they believe is the first observed public goods dilemma observed in a non-human and non-microbial system.

By using the social ant Pristomyrmex punctatus, they were able to show the fitness consequences to the colony and track the shifting genetic make-up as cheaters invaded and took hold. Researchers have recently evaluated these questions in systems involving viruses and cells (where cells may secrete protective substances, or self-destruct to form a spore-dispersing stalk) but not in multicellular organisms before. Yet the results are so similar, write Dobata and Tsuji, that they believe universal principles are at play.

P. punctatus is a curious species. The queen caste, morphologically and functionally distinct in most social insects, has been secondarily lost. All workers are involved in both reproduction and cooperative tasks like foraging. There is still a division of labor, among age groups. Young workers take care of inside-nest tasks, which include asexual (thelytokous) reproduction. Older workers ease out of reproduction and shift to tasks outside the nest, like foraging.

But there is a third kind of P. punctatus. A group of cheaters, made of a single intraspecific lineage in the field, that engage in very few tasks, save for reproduction.

The researchers found when these genetic cheaters infect a colony they have better individual fitness than the workers, both in terms of survival and brood production. They reduce worker survival and reproduction, as more young workers shift to tasks outside the nest to effectively pick up the slack. Eventually, the cheater hordes take over. The authors call the cheaters a kind of  ”transmissible social cancer.”

In cheater-only colonies, more eggs are initially produced, compared to worker colonies, but they are neglected. Eggs begin to rot and the nest becomes a dirty, unhygienic place. Eventually, the nest dies. For a group, cheating is an evolutionary dead end.
Compare the global North to the global South. Then consider whether the immigrant communities of today more closely resemble meticulous productive ant nests or dirty, unhygienic places. Ants might not be able to anticipate the idiocratic consequences of allow a "transmissible social cancer" to take root in their colonies, but one would have thought that human beings could do better.

When a society's social policy is a scientifically predictable evolutionary dead end, it should invite rethink. Instead, questioning it is deemed akin to blasphemy. This is not the hallmark of a society destined for survival.
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 Ann MorganOctober 08, 2013 4:49 AM
**When a society's social policy is a scientifically predictable evolutionary dead end,**

Are you admitting now that evolution occurs and that some forms of 'moral' behavior might be selected for and enforced by certain species without it necessarily being 'commanded' by a 'God'?

If you still deny evolution, then you need to retract your entire argument.

If you do want to use an evolutionary argument, I'll give you some help in the form of behavior of another social insect. Honey bees prevent 'cheaters' by posting guards at the entrance to their hive. Any bee from any hive with a full load of nectar in it's stomach is welcome into their hive. A bee without a load of nectar is not allowed in, and will be attacked if it attempts to force it's way in.
MrGreenManOctober 08, 2013 6:26 AM
@Ann Morgan

Are you admitting now that evolution occurs and that some forms of 'moral' behavior might be selected for and enforced by certain species without it necessarily being 'commanded' by a 'God'?

If you still deny evolution, then you need to retract your entire argument.


You seem to fail at the idea of knowing and using the stated beliefs of your adversary in argument against them, or, more simply, in the Alinsky formula, to make your opponent live by his own rules. Immigration activists are, by and large, leftists; leftists, by and large, believe in St. Darwin and whatever the scientists claim today is the theory of abiogenesis and macroevolution, and so fetishize the ultimate purpose in life to be reproduction and the successful reproduction of your line. Therefore, if you believe in evolution, there is a message here aimed at you.

However, we live in a culture that is simply drenched in the odors of the left - feminism, evolution, communism, Keynsesianism - and so, the terminology is understood, and the meanings known, even if not universally believed. If you happily say - evolution is bunk - well, then, this argument isn't as well targeted at you, but it does still make a good point when you overlook the evolution mumbo-jumbo. Someone who rejects abiogenesis as unscientific hand waving and speciation with branching to be unprovable in the context of sexual reproduction knows what is meant by evolutionary dead end, anyway, to mean that they won't reproduce and they or their offspring will eventually be supplanted/out-bred. There are all sorts of other reasons you would find this a bad thing apart from some moral perspective born of evolution; just because you are so brain damaged doesn't mean everyone else is required to think the way you do.

Knowing the terminology - e.g. transubstantiation - and talking to a someone who believes about it doesn't mean you have to believe it, just that you know who you are talking to and what they do or don't value.
SusanOctober 08, 2013 10:28 AM
What an excellent analogy on the future death of California. Using the science of ants yet! The spiral should quicken now that every illegal is going to be drawn there, thanks to Moonbeam's announcement of sanctuary yesterday. Some reports were saying this stupidity is his way of setting himself up for a run at the Big Chair.

I have never believed in evolution in the way that you do Ann. However, I do believe that God implanted, at the time of His creation, the ability to adapt to a changing environment in order to ensure survival. 

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