Re:Why do bees die when they sting you?
by tsimionescu on Sunday January 19, 2025 @01:23AM
(#42754265)
Yes, traits can propagate even if there is no selective pressure for them. But they won't reach 100% of the species, even less so 100% of several geographically separated species (such as African and European bees) just because they aren't that bad. Could we contrive a story where it could be possible something like this does happen? Sure, but it would be very unlikely (basically, it would require only a small population that happened to have this minor handicap to have randomly survived some mass extinction event that killed off the entirety of the rest of the species).
Why not? Honest question.
Intuitively, I'd say that there are plenty of traits that propagate as long as they aren't expensive in terms of genetic survival. It's the nature of random genetic mutation, random traits will develop and some of them won't really affect survival and may propagate.