Buzzing, sister, buzzing ...

There are few books on entomology; There are very few popular books in which the text is more than pictures. Therefore, I willingly accepted the proposal of the editorial office of the TRV-hunger read and express my opinion about the recently published book by Tor Hanson, “Burners. The natural history of bees. "

In fact, this is the story of a man who loved bees and wanted to understand the history and today's diversity of these lovely insects. To do this, the author went through field practice in the systematics of bees and interviewed a lot of entomologists. The book resembles a journalistic investigation written in a lively language. The author is fascinated by questions: when and how the bees became anthophiles - they began to specialize in nutrition by nectar and pollen; Why did they have an amazing eusocial lifestyle. A bit too much pathos, but it could be forgiven. The main trouble is that the “riddles” that Hanson writes about have long been unraveled.

For example, eusociality 1 . Hanson discusses all sorts of abstruse hypotheses of its origin, but finally quotes a specialist who understands what is the matter: “ ... he pointed to the system of reproductive ties, identical to the OS and ants, as the most plausible explanation. Since males are removed from unfertilized eggs, they convey an incomplete set of signs to their offspring, making all the sisters in the nest even closer relatives. ”

Indeed, the whole point is that in a detachment of membranes, the males of the haploid - that is, they have a single set of chromosomes. But the fact that haploid males “convey to their offspring an incomplete set of signs” is perfect nonsense. They convey a complete set, but this set is identical in all sperm. As a result, the nominal sisters of the webding are genetically identical not at 1/2, as in people, but at 3/4; The coefficient of the kinship of sisters with parents or descendants remain 1/2, as in all organisms with sexual reproduction. Thus, if the females born to the uterus fly away on their own to mating with drones, build their nests, etc., then they will make 50% of the copies of their genome. And if they remain in the nest to serve the uterus, they will spend resources not on children, but on new sisters, that is, 75% of the copy. Therefore, the web -winged invented eusociality a dozen times, and all other insects with diploid males - only once (termites). Discussing the issue here is hardly appropriate; Those wishing to figure out to read the “selfish gene” Richard Dokinza [1] - the tenth chapter is just about it, but it is better to read the whole book. This is a classic. You can add here the "expanded phenotype" of the same author.

Next. Circumstances and the exact time of the occurrence of bees are really unknown, and there really are almost no fossil finds. However, a lot will be clear when the molecular phylogenetics of the detachment will be well made. As for the overall logic of co -carbon -seeding plants and antofle insects, there are reasonable ideas how exactly this happened. On this subject, I advise you to read chapter 12 from the book of Cyril Eskov “An amazing paleontology” [2], but again, it is better-all this beautiful book. A huge amount of information is compressed there, but it is read as a detective.

The author describes more private aspects of insect life fascinatingly, but always unsystematic and chaotic. For example, Hanson collected by Hanson are interesting mentions of honey and beekeeping. In the age of refined sugar and electric lamps, we begin to forget how indispensable resources the bees gave people.

I was amused by the case described by the author with the illustrated reference book of the “bees of the world” - a real joke: “... was written by authoritative entomologists, released by a very solid publishing house of scientific literature, and a lovely, shot in close -up ... Flok!” I checked and found this book. I can even say what kind of fly is Mesembrina Meridiana . By the way, reading Hanson, you might think that only bees pollinate the flowers, and even hummingbirds help them a little. The role of bees is great, there is no dispute, but I believe that flies as pollinators will be more important.

Additionally, the understanding is complicated that Hanson often does not give Latin, therefore, in order to know who we are talking about, you need to be a specialist himself. For example, Pollen Wasps are mentioned in English; The translator is not an entomologist, he translates-“pollen wasps”, but there is no such name in Russian. And it would be in the original Masarinae-then when translating at least into the tongue of Ellochka-cereal, the reader could understand who it is, and, if desired, to receive additional information about this wonderful subfamily.

Reading “buzzing”, I always recalled Jean Henri Fabra and his book “Indications of insects” 2 [3]. Fabr is an amazing phenomenon: in fact, he was a simple school teacher, and when he was removed from teaching at the age of 55, he was seriously interested in entomology. The Fabr theory of evolution, which appeared at about the same time, has decisively rejected the Darwin theory of evolution and did not change this opinion until the end of his long life. Eccentric? In 1912, the “Indications of insects” were nominated to Nobel in literature, and in 1913, the president of France personally came to him in the village to express his respect and gratitude to the nation to the old eccentric. He was not given a Nobel, of course, but they read the Fabra, read and read. In general, you can be a self -taught and creationist, but stubbornly study nature, get interesting results and describe them sequentially.

Resume. We have quarantine. You can suffer, or you can use the free time to sit down for those books that must be read. I have already recommended three books. They wanted to say about what the book “buzzing” wanted to say about, but not very, in my opinion, she was able to. And those who have already read these books, I think, will agree that they should re -read them.

Nikita Vikhrev , cand. Biol. sciences

1. Dokins R. Egoistic gene. - M.: AST Corpus, 2013.
2. Eskov K. Yu. Amazing paleontology. - M.: Enas, 2012.
3. Fabr J. A. Indications of insects: in 2 vols. - M.: AST, 2000.

1 individuals of the eusocial species are combined into a single “super -Rganism”, for the sake of which altruism show and practice the division of labor. See: Elementy.ru/nauchno-populyarnaya_biblioteka/433453/eusotsialnost_i_fenomen_cheloveka . - Ed .

2 digitized book is available on the Internet. The publication I specified is the best, since it is equipped with comments on the specialist in the membrane of the Zoomusey of Moscow State University Alexander Anthropov: nevertheless, written in the 19th century needs modern explanations. - N.V.