> > "The haploid-diploid system is found in Hymenoptera. Males
are haploid;
> > females are diploid. Thus, if a queen bee mates with one drone, her
> > daughters share 3/4 of their genes with each other, not 1/2 as in the
> > XY and WZ systems. This is believed to be significant for the
> > development of eusociality, as it increases the significance of kin
> > selection."

JE:-
The most salient point that is mostly omitted from 
these hopelessly BIASED-FOR-HAMILTON texts is the fact 
females can and do, mate with MORE than just one drone. 
The Christian Victorian ideal of monogamy, like the
goodness of white sugar (which is a poison), remains a 
myth that even evolutionary science appears
to accept. Polygyny _reduces_ and does not 
_increase_ the significance of haplodiploid sex systems 
to kin selection. If the queen mated with just ONE
other male who was not related her haploid sons would be
related 0.5 and not 1.0, while her daughters would now,
only share one half of 3/4 = 0.375 of their genes with 
each other. In this situation her sons are only on a par 
with normal diploid species like the Isoptera (white ants) 
but now her daughters are even _less_ related
than 0.5. As I have previously pointed out, if you
now include ORDINARY gene fitness epistasis (more than 
one gene is required to code for the kin selective effect)
and hypothesise what Dawkins seemed to think was
a great-idea-at-the-time, his so called "Green Beard"
marker gene allowing Hamilton's selfish genes to 
be able to seek each other out and mate with each other, 
then Hamilton's rule becomes _inoperable_ because:

		r^eb > c

where e = the number of fitness epistatic genes.

Hamilton only assumed random mating because 
e is not significant. Everybody just
decided to forget about e and pretend
it did not even exist allowing Dawkins 
basic error.

With each extra gene fitness epistatic gene
the number of recipients required to be helped
increases _exponentially_. Not only is Hamilton's
rule confined to monogamy in eusocials it also
confined to just random mating to have any chance
of being verified. Yet, eusocials remain endlessly
paraded as verifications of Hamilton's Rule.

Females of primitively eusocial 
wasps such as the Polistinae were only _assumed_ 
to be singly mated. Allozyme studies reported 
relatedness values of female nestmates of M. mexicanus 
to be approximately 0.5. Because of the haplodiploid 
nature of the order Hymenoptera, this relatedness value 
can either be the result of multiple mating by queens, 
or polygyny, or both.

Hamilton's rule remains just a hopelessly 
misused simplified model of fitness where 
eusociality has been endlessly misused as
a verification of the rule. Even today
Dawkins disinformation re: his green beard
argument, remains. When is ANY biological 
reality going to enter this Mad Hatter's
Tea Party?


Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser{at}tpg.com.au
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