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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
Epigenetics As An Answer To Darwin’S “Special Difficulty,” Part 2: Natural Selection Of Metastable Epialleles In Honey Bee Castes, Douglas M. Ruden, Pablo E. Cingolani, Arko Sen, Wen Qu, Luan Wang, Marie-Claude Senut, Mark D. Garfinkel, Vincent E. Sollars, Xiangyi Lu
Epigenetics As An Answer To Darwin’S “Special Difficulty,” Part 2: Natural Selection Of Metastable Epialleles In Honey Bee Castes, Douglas M. Ruden, Pablo E. Cingolani, Arko Sen, Wen Qu, Luan Wang, Marie-Claude Senut, Mark D. Garfinkel, Vincent E. Sollars, Xiangyi Lu
Vincent E Sollars
In a recent perspective in this journal, Herb (2014) discussed how epigenetics is a possible mechanism to circumvent Charles Darwin’s “special difficulty” in using natural selection to explain the existence of the sterile-fertile dimorphism in eusocial insects. Darwin’s classic book “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” explains how natural selection of the fittest individuals in a population can allow a species to adapt to a novel or changing environment. However, in bees and other eusocial insects, such as ants and termites, there exist two or more castes of genetically similar females, from fertile queens to multiple …