Comment by HarHarVeryFunny | Hacker News Reader

Comment by HarHarVeryFunny | Hacker News Reader

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HarHarVeryFunny

Evolution in general works at the level of sub-populations rather than individuals. Genetic variation builds up over time in entire intra-breeding sub-populations of a species (mostly isolated for whatever reason - e.g. forest elephants vs plains elephants), then once in a while there will be a big environmental change (famine, disease, new competition, etc) that may suddenly make these accumulated changes in one sub-population (different from the accumulated changes in the other sub-population) critical to survival rather than benign.

The high-school version of evolution, playing out on an individual level, generation by generation (one baby giraffe, with a longer neck than another, reaches higher leaves and does better) gets the idea across, but evolution is about entire species not individuals, and for the most part any single genetic variation isn't going to have much impact, unless it's fatal.

The question is, which kind of environment pressure and context lead this ants to this adaptation. Perhaps a high mortality rate in their own species happened at some point? Maybe something like an STD?

The other thing to note is that integration of "foreign" genetic material also happens inside of individuals themselves, e.g. the famous cases of gut bacteria or mitochondrial DNA. One general puts a lot of emphasis on inter-species competition, e.g. predators and preys, but there's a lot of cooperation and symbiosis happening at all levels too.

> The question is, which kind of environment pressure and context lead this ants to this adaptation

Given how unusual this seems to be, maybe it's better to ask how it happened rather than why it happened? If this was environmental pressure, then why don't we see the same thing happening elsewhere (was this really such a unique environment)? Maybe it's better regarded as an artifact of messy evolution - a quirk rather than a feature?

It'd seem surprising if this persists for long (evolutionary timescale) given that the mother "species" is expending resources to support a different "species", unless there is some kind of symbiosis here - a mutual benefit.

I agree but in these cases the genetic variance that is being accumulated, is only limited to a few individuals who more or less don't interact with the world, except through their workers. But the workers themselves have no way of accumulating or passing on the genetic variation.

In some sense the genetic feedback loop for ant population is designed in such a way that, it makes sense when looking at each ant colony as a singular organism

Unlike the giraffe, or elephants, who are individually capable of accumulating genetic variations.

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