Identifying Selfishness, Altruism Gene

Photo of Honey Bee on a Geraldton Wax Flower, NSW, Australia.

A biologist at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada, has isolated the selfish gene.

Graham Thompson, who said scientists have always suspected that honeybees possess a selfish gene, says, "This basically provides a validation for a huge body of sociobiology." "It's a big step forward in understanding the evolutionary origins of reproductive altruism, which has been a big curiosity of evolutionary biologists for many, many decades."

Thompson studied honeybee communities in which all the female worker bees are sterile, leaving only the queen to reproduce.

"In the honeybee colony you have these queens and the workers. And the workers are totally sterile and so that is a classic, textbook example of reproductive altruism. So the workers forego their own reproductive output in order to help the queen reproduce."

Graham Thompson worked with Peter Oxley from the University of Sydney to isolate the gene that controls the female bees' reproduction, spurs them to be 'selfless helpers to the queen,' and ensure the evolutionary success of the colony.

"This means that the 'selfish' gene does exist, not just in theory but in reality," he said.

"It does establish in the general sense that there is genetic basis to behaviours like altruism," Thompson said.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

» Source: Canwest News Service