Ecology: Concepts and Applications 4th Edition by Manual Molles

Exercise 10

Outline how the honeyguide-human mutualism could have evolved from an earlier mutualism between honeyguides and honey badgers. In many parts of Africa today, people have begun to abandon traditional honey gathering in favor of keeping domestic bees and have also begun to substitute refined sugars bought at the market for the honey of wild bees. Explain how, under these circumstances, natural selection might eliminate guiding behavior in populations of the greater honeyguide. (In areas where honey gathering is no longer practiced, the greater honeyguide no longer guides people to bees' nests.)