A drone develops from an egg that is not fertilised, so he has a mother but no father…
Contributed by StemPy LabTry it on paper first. A hint, the key idea and the worked solution are here when you need them.
A drone develops from an egg that is not fertilised, so he has a mother but no father. His mother, a queen, has a father (a drone) and a mother (a queen). Count the ancestors of the drone, generation by generation, with this rule: a male has one parent, his mother. A female has two parents, a male and a female. The parents are generation , the grandparents are generation , and so on.
- How many great-grandparents (generation ) does the drone have?
- How many great-great-grandparents (generation ) does he have?
- How many great-great-grandparents does a human have?
Need a reminder? The key ideaShow
The worked solution
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Work it out on paper first. It is fine to get stuck or make a mistake: that is how we learn. When you are ready, go through the solution one step at a time, and check each step against your own.
Given. A male has one parent. A female has two.
Plan. Follow the ancestors, counting the males and the females.
Step 1. Generation 1. The mother: female.
Step 2. Generation 2. The queen's two parents: male and female, so in all.
Step 3. (a) Generation 3. The father of the queen (a male) has parent. The mother of the queen (a female) has parents. So great-grandparents: females and male.
Step 4. (b) Generation 4. The females have parents, and the male has . So .
Step 5. (c) A human. Each person has two parents, so .
Answer: bees; bees; people.
Check. The numbers are the Fibonacci numbers. Each is the sum of the two before it.
Watch out. A drone has fewer ancestors than a person at every generation, because males have only one parent.
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