What Is The Gene's Eye View of Evolution? Stated Clearly

While I wanted to keep the bee section simple, some people are wishing I added more detail. Here's more: Workers are all female, they can lay eggs but it's rare (and for reasons I won't go into, workers can only have sons). Usually it's just the queen that lays eggs. Some of the sisters are raised to become queens when the hive is large enough to split or if the current queen is slowing down. In the animation, the sister with the large abdomen is a future queen. Future queens have to be raised on a special diet from the start to display this phenotype (adult workers can not transform into effective queens). Interestingly, queen stingers are far more smooth even though they also carry the suicidal stinger genes. Barb growth is slowed by their special diet. This smooth stinger helps them kill rival queens, allows them to sting mammals without getting stuck, and is highly mobile, allowing them to use it as a tool for precision egg placement when laying. Aside from queens, the males (which are called drones) will also get to directly pass on their genes if they mate with queens from other hives. They don't have stingers but do carry suicidal stinger genes. Though workers don't normally lay eggs, any loss of a worker is a reproductive loss, as it's one less worker to help the reproductive family members spread their genes. That said, the loss of a worker is not nearly as big a loss as losing a queen or future queen. I left that detail out for simplicity but it actually does change the math, making the suicidal genes even more favorable then they would otherwise be. I left these details out of the video because they are largely a distraction if we are just trying to follow the suicidal genes. These genes spread because they work at perpetuating themselves better than non-suicidal genes could, given the selection pressures normally put on bees.

Sometimes a chicken is just an egg’s way of making another egg

I'm an old man with LOTS of study & knowledge of Evolution: this is one of the best explanations I have ever seen.

that music segment was beautiful!

This channel deserves more eyes

Terry Pratchett put it best: "Evolution is great for a species, but it can be a real bitch for the individuals."

Regarding the bees, you forgot to mention the most crucial part which makes them so unique. In most species a sibling shares 1/2 relatedness value. However, bee sister’s specifically share a 3/4 value. Hence, it makes sense for them to work for the queen to produce more offspring, so they can hopefully be more sisters. This was in Chapter 8 of the selfish gene if I recall correctly.

Understanding evolution is like a spiritual realisation. Much better than that

The selfish gene by Richard Dawkins is a great book to read when trying to understand such concepts.

I loved the analogy with musical notes. As a Computer Science student, I like to think of genes as a set of simple machine instructions, from which complex programs can be constructed.

Read the selfish gene during lockdown. Game changer for me.

Here's the video on gene definitions: Is this REALLY a gene? https://youtu.be/dX4bDXdrZy4

stumbled across your channel and i'm in awe by how you break down such complex subjects, thank you so much for educating us

I have been using Mr. Perry's videos for years to help teach evolution in my HS Biology classes. They are just getting better and better. Thank you so much for them!

Thank you for this incredible video. You really do put out some of the best content on YouTube. I always share these videos with my friends and family.

The fact that we live in a time where you can get such amazing explanation for almost free (As long as you have an device and an internet connection) is truly marvelous. The library of Alexandria might have burned down, but what we have today is almost indistinguishable from magic.

I really like the calm, soothing narration and nice animations. I wish there were more videos from this channel.

Nice. This video touches on the 3 key points that I find most people do not understand about the theory of evolution. I don’t know why, but these 3 statements seem so hard for people to understand about the process of evolution. 0:48 “Genes are the smallest things able to evolve.” Emphasis on “genes are able to evolve.” Always think of evolution as genes mutating. before there were organisms, there were genes that evolved. 2:26 “Things that are better at reproducing are more likely to reproduce.” More specifically, before there were organisms, genes that were better at replicating (reproducing), were more likely to replicate. 4:07 “Now, genes do not have minds or ambitions. They do not compete, quote, on purpose. But, if selection pressures stay the same, long claw genes will completely eliminate short claw genes. This is an automatic consequence of natural selection.” People usually imagine evolution as a force that has a certain goal to make organisms more suitable to their environment. It’s humancentric to think that evolution is a conscious entity that wants to make organisms better suitable for survival in their environment. That because humans use artificial selection to make organisms that are better suitable for our desired purposes. It’s hard for most people to let go of this humancentric view of the world.

Thank you for hiring and crediting two people to work on the music. Has a person who makes a living from music education I've developed a reflexive cringe when music shows up as an analogy in another field as the analogy is so often clumsy or misrepresentative. I was delighted by how well the musical analogy was made in this video.

Your video helped me understand the real meaning of the book, which I was unable to grasp when I read the book a few years before. Keep up the good work.