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Do Honeybees Defy Dinosaur Extinction Theories?
neutron_p writes "The humble tropical honeybee may challenge the idea that a post-asteroid impact "nuclear winter" was a big player in the decimation of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Somehow the tropical honeybee, Cretotrigona prisca, survived the end-Cretaceous extinction event, despite what many researchers believe was a years-long period of darkness and frigid temperatures caused by sunlight-blocking dust and smoke from the asteroid impact at Chicxulub."
It was a mass extinction, not a total extinction. If nothing had survived, we would have started over again 65 million years ago at a few species near ocean bottom vents. Many, many, many land plants and creatures survived. A much more interesting question would be, "How did Cretotrigona prisca or their close ancestors survive the mass extinction event about 65 million years ago"?
RTFA - tropical honeybees DON'T survive extended darkness. That's why it's odd. They aren't questioning the fact that ANY life survived, it's the fact that this fragile type of honeybees, specifically, survived.
guess what: languages evolve and the exact meaning of words can change.
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
The asteroid impact model is perhaps too simple, too. The anomaly of this Honeybee finding may indicate a need for improvement in the asteroid hypothesis.
Namely, would the temperature truly drop globally after the collision of an asteroid? Or is there an anomalous spot on earth that the temperature remains habitable (via some fluid exchange of heat or thinning of obscuring dust cloud)?
In short, don't just jump to conclusion because there are some anomalies in a model. After all, that is why it is called "model".
-b
Likewise as is the case with fruit flies, Im sure their lifespan is of the length that would permit fast mutation... we arnt talking about a animal that lives more than 6 months here.
Really to base your theory on a insect that has a short lifespan and high mutation level is not the smartest thing in the world.
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Sex != procreation. I don't think too many guys go to clubs with the goal of getting a woman pregnant :-)
Humans weren't even close to existing 65 million years ago. Ancient humans wouldn't have created a legend about an event that old because no human could have known it happened.
Oh, Edmund, can it be true? that I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest green?
"Well, I know I will get hit hard for this but have to bring it up....
What about the flood written about in the bible, in ancient writings of India, written about by the ancient peoples of middle america and in many other old cultures? Could this have been it? Could they have all drown?"
How recent do you think this was?
of which this is one, but several people have posted things like, "bees can survive a winter," and "you can toss 'em in the freezer and they'll be okay in a few days."
The woman's an EXPERT in the field. You think she hasn't considered this? If you read the article, it discusses, specifically a range that this TROPICAL honey bee survives in. Tropical honey bees probably don't need to adapt to survive to very cold temperatures, as it DOESN'T TEND TO GET COLD IN THE TROPICS!!!! If you're comparing them to your common honey bee that lives in the U.S., Canada, or Europe, it's quite possible they've adapted to cold weather since it DOES GET COLD THERE.
Sorry, I don't mean to scream, but it's kind of like having a paleontologist try to tell you why your code isn't running? Thanks, but I don't need the help of a paleontologist.
Unless you have at least a hobbyist background in paleontology, you're probably not qualified to even speculate. I'm pretty sure I'm not qualified to question her findings.
Also, keep in mind, we're not talking about a winter that lasted a few months. We're talking about a winter that lasted a few THOUSAND years. It's a lot to ask of any creature to live outside of its normal survival temperature for a few months, let alone a few THOUSAND years. So, sticking a bee in your freezer for a few days is hardly a valid comparison.
That doesn't make it sound any less stupid.
Last time I checked, the Roman Army no longer existed. Get with the times. The language certainly has.
Bees are capable of extended dormancy.
Unlike dinosaurs, they store food so when 'awake' they don't 'need' forage.
Under adverse conditions, if a lot of bees in a colony die, there is just that much food for the others. Kind of like the Donner party (not to be confused with dinner party).
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
Ummm... Total darkness isn't kind to birds, plants, or other animals or insects. The darkness may not have been 100%, mabye it's just a 20% dip in available light. That's enough to drastically change plant life (and everything else).
We've let too many Hollywood producers "visualize" the meteor impact, I'm sure it was fantastic, but it's really hard to know exactly what happened such a long time ago. Surely it didn't flip cars like flapjacks on the streets of NY, and it definately didn't enflame the entire world like Armageddon's opening screen.
It could be that honey bees "went south for the winter" except in this case they used to live in the north, and moved south as the temperatures changed. It could be that honeybees have become genetically acclimated to our current temperatures, and can no longer accomodate temperature changes. It could be that some flowering plants could sustain them in the relative darkness. Mabye they can use alternative food sources in conditions of extreme hunger.
A lot of my guesses are certain to be wrong, and you may come up with much better possibilities than these, but from the quality of the information in this article, nobody can support a reason. It's a shame that so much science asks the populace to take it's findings on faith, instead of showing the evidence and how they came to the conclusion. Mabye it's the lack of good scientific journalisim, or mabye journalists don't trust the population to understand, just to accept. Remember there's not even a reference to the estimated sunlight blockage or temperature drop.
Slashdot readers might, it could be their only chance.
Eh.
According to the theory of the Ka-BLAM event, temperatures didn't drop more than about 22 degrees. Do the math:
~91 degrees (optimal temp)
- 22 (max temp drop)
= 69 degrees. That's far above freezing, but far below what the bees--AND the flowers--need to survive. So, according to the theory, the flowers DIED for lack of sunlight, and the bees DIED from (to them) cold temperatures. Since they weren't frozen, chemical reactions did not stop; therefore, they starved to death because they couldn't keep (from TA) vital metabolic activities running. And since they weren't frozen, their carcasses should have Rotted Away. But...
they're Still Here. That means there's something Wrong with the theory.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
I get annoyed when this word is used incorrectly
And I get annoyed by seeming pedants who themselves use malaprops. Do you really mean "crowdedness", as if they needed to eliminate every tenth man just so they could get more elbow room?
Or maybe you meant "cowardice", which is more accurate historical motivation for the practice.
Please, before you pick grammatical nits, make sure you know how to spell every word you use yourself. Otherwise you just look ridiculous.
--
$tar -xvf
Here's the link which presents the abstract to her thesis. Having read and written a few of these, it sounded good until the latent logical fallacies became obvious.
b st ract_80171.htm
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2004AM/finalprogram/a
Note that she talks about optimum temperature range of the bees, and then contrasts that with projected estimates of ambient temperature drop. Then her projected temperature drop OVERLAPPS the previously projected temperature drop. Also she does not provide evidence that these bees cannot survive in a temperate climate, but again directs us back to it's optimum living range.
Finally, she never attempts to resolve the first leap of faith in her hypothesis. That modern day relatives are metabolically identical to thier ancient ancestors.
Maybe the actual presentation fills in these missing gaps, but I believe that if she had something really earthshaking to say, she would present just enough hints of her evidence in the abstract to make people's eyes pop.
But it's a geographic term, so I reject it.
Without knowing anything about the bee physiology vs. dinosaur physiology, it's completely speculation. The author is claiming to know about the ancient bee physiology based on modern honeybees; that argument is nonsensical, since these bees were quite divergent, genetically, from modern bees.
Seing as 22 modern species of bees do just great in arctic conditions. Stick an ostrich there (birds being the closest relative of dinosaurs), and it will be dead in no time. There's no way to know that these particular bees can't handle a climate change better than dinosaurs.
That's it, Mr. Giraffe, get all the marmalade.
"...amber-preserved specimens of the oldest tropical honey bee, Cretotrigona prisca, are almost indistinguishable from - and are probably the ancestors of - some modern tropical honeybees like Dactylurina, according to other studies cited by Kozisek"
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
How long can you freeze a bee before it cannot be revived? I remember reading about a 100 year old bug called a bearbug or something like that which was revived... my theory is that bugs have non-linear evolution... a bug thawed today could have been frozen very long ago.
Expect Freedom.
* these bees don't store honey, so they depend on flowers
* the temperature drop wasn't enough to trigger hibernation
* [not from TFA] the queen can't survive alone, nor can larvae
* the flowers in the region don't survive asteroid winters at all
* ergo, neither did the bees
This is all postulated from the modern behaviour of a probably-related but definitely distinct species and wild guesswork. There is no presented evidence that the ancient species that pre-existed the event behaved in even a remotely similar way.