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Comment by IIAOPSW | Hacker News Reader

I know a reasonable amount of game theory and I think you're looking at the wrong field for insight. The stung animal isn't making a strategic choice to carry pathogens around which might "payback" the some hypothetical bee hive which may or may not sting them. From the bees perspective the choice of strategy is independent of any other actors strategic decisions. Its just a normal optimization problem, not game-theoretic coupled optimization problems.

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In this case the actor isn't the bee but the bee's genetic programming, which only propagates via the queen and hive. If the programming allows a bee to cary a fatal disease back to the hive, the program ceases to propagate and may cease to exist. This provides strong selection pressure against fouling the hive.

The pathogen itself is being optimized to spread though. I think game theory still applies to natural selection in some sense.

Not in this case as the pathogen isn’t going to react to the evolutionary defences of the bee by adjusting its infectiousness.

Of course it is. The animals producing the pathogen will adapt to the bees

>> Not in this case as the pathogen isn’t going to react to the evolutionary defences of the bee by adjusting its infectiousness

> Of course it is

That is incorrect. Diseases might evolve to be more infectious. This is not a certainty.

There are many directions a disease can change and selecting to be more likely for a specific species is dependent on an N-vector calculus, with the most impactful cofactors being the length of time they (an attacking bee and a pathogen and the bee victim) coexist in the same environments and the utility of such an adaptation and the nature of the disease (ie incubation time, effects, etc) over time. It's likely the nature of a specific disease and the victim are going to vary more over time, making a favorable situation to prevent any attacking bee to simply not return.

The pathogens may or may mutate but this is separate to bee mutations. They don’t respond to each other.

On evolutionary timescales, it does.

Good point. I took a chance with my Great Courses only knowledge of game theory.

Another point people are pointing out is that bees don't usually die after stinging other bee. Other bees are the easiest vectors for the infections I have had to deal with. I wonder what evolutionary advantage of not returning to the hive grants when a bee stings a larger animal (mammal, bird, etc).

The mating process of the drone male bees (with suicidal semelparity) maybe has a more obvious (but similar?) answer in that they have served their role and want to maximize their reproductive effectiveness.

Certainly attaching your venom pump to a mammal will help discourage it now and in the future. Given average bee lifetimes are 3-4 weeks anyway, it's also not much of a sacrifice for the hive.

The genetic similarly of bees to their queen is higher (75%) than most species, so kinship theory may point to less individualistic behavior as well.

https://www.lakeforest.edu/news/the-emerging-study-of-kinshi...

Maybe the bee dying is just the side effect of what it's really trying to do. Maybe if the the bees stingers did not have barbs they would just annoy a bear a little and he would happly suffer a few stings to get the honey. But with barbs the stinger stays in the mammal and irritates the skin for longer periods of time. If course this means the bee has its stinger ripped off and dies but his stinger still causes damage and has deterent affect. Also I imagine a bee that did not die when stinging still stood a good chance of dying due to slap from hand or paw anyway. Or if a bear is raiding hive thoese bees are died anyway if they don't stop him so you might as well inflict maximum damage

I can vouch for the veracity of bumblebees. I disturbed a nest and was chased by a couple of bees. I took 6 hits from one bee. 1st one felt like a rock hit me. Each after was similarly unpleasant. And after the 2nd each one was while I was in full sprint. I eventually escaped by jumping in a car.

Having been stung by bees, one really wants to get the stinger out. If one doesn't have fingers, that could be very annoying to the stingee, and certainly a further deterrent.

A stinger could, in principle, evolve to becomd separable and regenerable, like a lizard tail.

Not to their queen, but to each other.

Since only the Queen reproduces in a hive and all the bees are its sterile offsprings, IMHO the whole hive is equivalent to the Queen evolutionary-speaking. Individual bees are not independent actors. So I think there is no game theory here and this is no different than a giraffe growing a longer neck.

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