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Thread: Honeybee races - nature or nurture?

  1. #31

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    I always understood it as bees not being limited by their genetics at least not in what they display.
    But surely the result is the same if we keep selecting tendencies.
    A trait that is never displayed may as well not be there.
    I'm probably over simplifying it, but if traits can be fixed, how do they change ?
    Or do you mean that at some stage in the future a geneticist could switch them back on ? That would take us back to the species needing human intervention to survive.
    I've got some more reading to do I think.
    Last edited by SDM; 04-08-2015 at 10:58 AM.

  2. #32

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    OK so I found this:
    https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&so...k-88yFOCkjmFAA

    Which suggests the affects are immediate or next generational but temporary,but that fixing over multiple generations is possible with some traits.
    That's pretty encouraging as long as we don't do something that wipes them out in a couple of generations.
    It makes more sense now and ties in with an observation I'd made that, after a health inspection(all bees shook from frames) just over half my colonies would be a bit more alert to my presence next inspection. Now assuming it's not a learned response in the usual sense of learning. It would be a temporary epigenetic one. Does that sound right ?
    Last edited by SDM; 04-08-2015 at 12:14 PM.

  3. #33

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    Another question. Given the variation in response there would be some gene that controls response to epigenetic stimuli that would, I presume have a more mendelian rule book for inheritance.
    That would still mean our choices becoming ever more widespread, however much slower.
    I'm left feeling we should leave the genes alone and focus on controlling the switches.
    But you've given me a new selection criteria. I will try and select for the strongest epigenetic response as well. As that would surely be in the best interest of the species.

  4. #34
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Ummm ... as a card-carrying geneticist (well, its lying about somewhere) I feel obliged to intervene but I'm not sure how productive this will be.

    Epigenetics. You can't select for epigenetics as if it is selectable then it is genetics, by definition. The switches and controls are embedded in the genetic code, and if you want to change the switches by selection of the variants around, you are selecting for heritable variants in (and near) the gene. So if it is change in some trait you are after, and you don't want it to go away after you stop using some magic treatment to make it happen (that nice Ewan in Aberdeen has some), then it has to be heritable and therefore genetic.

    The talk of 'fixing' traits. If you 'fix' a trait it mean that the trait is now always going to be present in the population for genetic reasons, unless you permit matings outside the group. Lets say there is a gene to make people blethery (they tend to hang out on online fora), a. Normal, non-blethery people have the dominant version of the gene, A. The blethery version is recessive (masked when the dominant one is present) and is designated a. Everyone has two versions of the gene as our chromosomes are in pairs.

    Here is the genetic status of a bunch of people living on one desert island, all of them:

    AA, Aa, AA, AA, Aa, aa, Aa, AA, AA, aa, Aa

    There are two blethery ones amongst that lot (aa). Usually the blethery ones are entertaining but even if they annoy the others so much so that they are dispatched off in the high seas in a leaky canoe, there are still hidden blethery genes there and amongst the next generation you can expect more blethery offspring.

    However if there is a big storm which wipes out most of them and, by chance, the only survivors are three AA individuals (why I chose three and not two isn't obvious, even to me) then it makes no difference how many children they have between them, the children will always be AA and will never again produce blethery offspring. The trait is fixed in the population. Until someone attractive in a canoe stops by, or a chance mutation in the gene throws up another blethery version, which will be a very, very rare occurence.

    There speaks a man who knows the power of being able to tinker with the mechanisms that control gene action, but is a bit sceptical of erecting this new discipline Epigenetics. Might be wrong of course, it has been known.

  5. #35

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    I will leave you all to read up on epigenetics
    It attempts to explain how organisms react to the environment and other challenges through gene expression
    I'm off to do a spot of beekeeping now

  6. #36

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    Quote Originally Posted by gavin View Post
    Here is the genetic status of a bunch of people living on one desert island, all of them:

    AA, Aa, AA, AA, Aa, aa, Aa, AA, AA, aa, Aa

    .
    Is this how the island of Yap got its name?

  7. #37

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    Quote Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger View Post
    I'm off to do a spot of beekeeping now
    The very best example of epigenetics has to be something DR exploits all the time in his beekeeping, namely getting a superfed larva that develops into a Q whereas another larva, with the same genetic code, but fed less becomes a worker.

  8. #38

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    Thanks FD I honestly wouldn't have thought of that example

  9. #39
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Calluna4u View Post
    Is this how the island of Yap got its name?
    Post of the week!!

    'Major bee farmer resorts to internet banter to relieve boredom during difficult beekeeping season.'

    I knew nothing of Yap but am better informed now. Don't fancy using the local currency, I tend to stick the loose change in my pockets. Cracking flag:



    Thanks ... umm ... feckless (always feel uneasy typing that).

  10. #40
    Senior Member Mellifera Crofter's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gavin View Post
    Post of the week!!

    'Major bee farmer resorts to internet banter to relieve boredom during difficult beekeeping season.'

    I knew nothing of Yap but am better informed now. Don't fancy using the local currency, I tend to stick the loose change in my pockets. Cracking flag:
    All the sculptor bankers on Yap were aa and disappeared while quarrying for money - so no more quantitative easing of local money.

    Ps: oops - and Aa.
    Last edited by Mellifera Crofter; 04-08-2015 at 10:52 PM.

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