Next, let’s refer to A.1 and B.1 from above. There is a relationship between this bee-tic and the recall of a food location. What happens if two bees who have the tic run into each other, while one of them is ticcing. Let’s get more specific. Say the tic works this way: the bee tends to pose in the direction of the food relative to the sun, and waggle it’s butt.
This is not necessarily a big stretch, given A.1 above. A bee’s gotta have a pretty good sense of three-dimensional space, and based on behaviors that evolved from phototaxis has a good idea where the sun is in that three-space. That must be expressed somehow in the bee brain. So.
Bee with tic #2 comes along and starts feelin’ up bee #1 who is ticcing away. Maybe nothing happens. Or maybe bee #2 starts ticcing as well, but so what. (side note: it’s even possible that some vestiges of this type of behavior evolved several times, only for one reason or another never “made it”. The “nothing happens” and other possible responses may be those reasons. The point is, the story being told here only had to happen successfully once to succeed.)
Or maybe bee #2, although not necessarily acting in sympathy with bee #1, receives a stimulus that for some reason imprints this bee idea about flying in a certain direction with respect to the angle of the sun. (We’re invoking B.1 and B.2 here).
So now bee #2 goes flying in that direction. Eventually bee #2 finds some food there. And so remembers that there is food there. And now we’ve got two bees ticcing the same way.
The result is that bees with the tic have a slightly higher tendency to find food. Now, to an outside observer the reasons may be subtle. Just because a bee flies in a direction where food was doesn’t mean they’ll find it too. But statistically, over time, they seem to have a better success rate. Now we’ve gone from relatively neutral behavior to behavior that offers a slight survival advantage.
I think at this point you can see how, once the basic behavior has been established, and found useful, it may become refined over time. Subsequent mutations may offer increased advantages until the behavior is so refined that it look extremely well thought-out and planned.
One last thought, to clarify evolutionary theory. Not only does the behavior have to give an advantage, but over time whatever survival pressures are being placed on the species need to continue to reinforce the need for that advantage, and the behavior needs to remain optimal. For instance:
Other behaviors may have arisen that provided better advantages than the bee dance. Those bees would have had a better chance of surviving. Maybe that would have meant goodbye bee dance.
Or, let’s say, due to the predation habits of a newly evolved bee-eater, focusing on one food source instead of flying randomly results in more bees being eaten (it’s a reach but I’m trying…). Then the bee dance is suddenly a bad idea.
I’m gonna stop now and take a breath, but if you want me to spin this story out some more, let me know…
…Oh yeah, the disclaimer again…
OK, time for a beer and some MPSIMS. Enough thought for today.
