Crazy ideas... Complicated theories...

I was reading chapter 10 and something came trough my mind. When he was talking about the Hymenoptera insects I read that there are infertile workers that work for the successful reproduction of the queen and the others.

That makes sense. But, I don't understand how are there so many infertile insects? I mean, how is a gene like that, first of all going to spread around the population, and second of all be good enough to be preserved?

Okay, it could be preserved, their job is not to reproduce. Yet, how does it pass on? I have various conclusions on why would this happen. First, I would say that it is the same thing that happens to mules. They are common in the population because a horse and a donkey create a mule. It is supposedly a common meet and therefore, you see these animals often. (If you leave in the coast, like Barranquilla, for example).

Another explanation could be that that gene for infertility is recessive. Therefore, lots of these insects carry them but are not necessarily infertile. While the unlucky offspring do have this gene expressed.

Those are my only two theories and probably it is the second one that makes more sense. Yet it is strange to find this kind of allele in an animal. And it being so common.

This reminds me to the movie Children of Men, where humanity has turned infertile and therefore are on the verge of extinction. I imagine that theoretically. We could be carrying some kind of gene that could eventually cause infertility and that could be passed on easily.

This makes me wonder how lots of hypothetical ideas in regards to human extinction can certainly occur. It might not be with an infertility gene. But, who knows? we might be carrying a potentially destructive gene in our systems. And it hasnt been expressed. It all takes a matter of time, for a random mutation to happen.

Who knows what will be of humanity...