Evolution of Social Behavior Through Interpopulation Selection

Evolution of social behavior through interpopulation selection.

Under certain special conditions natural selection can be effective at the level of local populations, or demes. Such interpopulation selection will favor genotypes that reduce the probability of extinction of their parent population even at the cost of a lowered inclusive fitness. Such genotypes may be characterized by altruistic traits only in a viscous population, i.e., in a population in wh...

Evolution of Social Behavior: Individual and Group Selection

If we were told that a man lived a long and prosperous life in the world of Chicago gangsters, we would be entitled to make some guesses as to the sort of man he was . . . . Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world . . . . If you look at the way natural selection works, it seems to follow that anything that ha...

Evolution of Social Behavior: Individual and Group Selection Models

The Evolution of Social Behavior

For several years the study of social behavior has been undergoing a revolution with far-reaching consequences for the social and biological sciences. Partly responsible are three recent changes in the attitudes of evolutionary biologists. First was grow­ ing acceptance of the evidence that the potency of natural selection is overwhelm­ ingly concentrated at levels no higher than that of the in...

Evolution: Social Selection for Eccentricity

The dress code of paper wasps, like that of humans, is related to their social habits: species with a flexible nest-founding strategy have highly variable black-and-yellow markings. This color polymorphism facilitates individual recognition and might have been selected to permit complex social interactions.