If the gene targeted a crucial pathway, mites may or may not be able to adapt. -HVH
While I believe your statement is accurate (organisms have repeatedly demonstrated that, confronted with extreme selective pressures, they either adapt or become extinct), I doubt that extinction of
Varroa through transgenic bees is very likely at all. So far, we (humans) have proven ourselves very poor at "eradicating" the pests we've attempted to eliminate. Take primary screwworm flies as an example: efforts over the last 50 years have "eradicated" the flies, yet massive numbers of sterile males must be released annually to ensure that screwworms do not "recur." (Which begs the question, "If they are truly eradicated, how could they recur?") More recently, studies have demonstrated that female screwworms are employing different mating strategies that may be difficult to overcome (the reason that sterile male releases worked so well with screwworm was that females mate only once in their lives); some females now mate multiply, rather than singly, and some evidence suggests that females can now somehow evaluate potential mates to determine whether or not the males are sterile.
I think time and money is better spent on efforts to manage pests.
...the latter, not the former. -deknow
The age to potential reproduction in humans is much lower than many people wish to acknowledge. Humans can and do reproduce successfully by the time they are in their mid teens, if not before. Do you mean to suggest that the average longevity of humans in times past was less than 20, or that a significantly greater percentage of the population is living to, say, 25 than were in the past?
so you now have these diverse genes staying in the gene pool which require medical intervention in order to reproduce. i'm not sure this is a good road to go down... -deknow
Without getting into the morals and ethics of such a thing, "fitness" cares not "how" but "if." So long as an individual passes genes into future generations, that individual's fitness increases. When you get into the "how," you open up a realm of hypotheticals. (For instance, "That deer that just gave birth to twins was only able to do so because some human behind the wheel of a car had fast enough reflexes to avoid hitting her four months ago on the highway." That doesn't change the fact that she just passed genes into the next generation; whether or not she "deserved" to reproduce is a question of morals and ethics and judgement, while the twins standing next to her are evidence of her evolutionary fitness.)
i expect, if one could find the data, that before c-sections was used, that there were less people that required them (as those that did tended not to be born alive and/or died in childbirth). -deknow
Interesting trivia: the first account of a "c-section" was recorded by Pliny the Elder in the first century A. D., supposedly documenting the birth of one of the Caesars (which is perhaps where the term "caesarean section," shortened to "c-section," originated). Of course, back in those days, the mothers didn't typically survive such practices.
well, diversity in a gene pool is not "every possible gene" for a good reason. -deknow
Well, pretty much it is. "Diversity" is measured by the differences. The more possibilities in the genes, the greater the diversity. Now, whether or not that diversity is desireable is a different question.
how long do you think it will be before the words of martin luther king jr. cease to have a significant impact on the world? what he contributed to society is much greater (imho) than what he contributed to the gene pool by reproducing. -deknow
Maybe so, but his evolutionary fitness is measured in terms of how many progeny he left here on earth, not what he may have accomplished to advance human culture.
Think about it in terms of a different species -- honey bees. You have a queen bee that communicates well with other bees, and rails against what bees "see" as injustice in foraging, but lays very few eggs. Is her fitness greater or lesser than a queen that does nothing but lay massive amounts of eggs?
Let's go a step further and talk longevity of honey bee queens. A queen that lays a few thousand eggs over the course of four years ends up dying without casting any swarms. A queen that lives one year lays tens of thousands of eggs and produces four swarms, three of which produce swarms in the next year. Leaving the drones out of the equation at this stage, which has greater evolutionary fitness?
Organisms that are living tend to want to keep living, but that doesn't mean that organisms that live longer have greater fitness than those that live for shorter spans.
No way no how. However, it might be easier to get funding to do
some fancy GM work as opposed to good old fashioned breeding. -MichealW
I suspect that this is about right, although the speed and deliberate addition of selected genes might offset the "low-tech" methods, economically.
On the humans though, a group
of people not considered 'fit' can contribute greatly to the 'fitness' of
the society as a whole. Thats always been a benefit of societies and tribes. -MichaelW
This tends to be true to honey bees as well. Think of the average worker: her direct fitness is likely zero, or very, very close to it (unless she's a drone layer). Her "inclusive fitness" (the fitness gained by caring for closely-related individuals that share genes that might be passed into future generations) is much greater. The same can work in humans.
The problem, again, lies in a confusion of "fitness," a measure of evolutionary prowess.
IMO we should not interfere with bee genetics while there is an a relatively unexplored, natural alternative: working more closely with the bees' needs. Most especially, they need a better environment than the Langstroth hive - designed 160 years ago, when we had little understanding of bees' nature, but blindly used ever since - and less dependence on synthetic inputs. -buckbee
I was under the impression that
Varroa made the host shift in an area where North American Langstroth hives were seldom, if ever, used. Do you have any documentation to support the hypothesis that simply altering the design of the hive will reduce pest problems from
Varroa?