kin selection
gregladen | June 28, 2012This looks like one of those questions that pops up when you start typing a query into a Google Search Box, but it is really a question asked rhetorically by Claudia Sawyer on my facebook status where I made mention of the fact that toddlers will put anything you give them in their mouth (even after that "putting everything in their mouth" phase is over ... they still do it enough that you can't give them knives or sandpaper, believe it or not).
And there actually is an answer to this question and it comes from science. The answer is about five years old, and here's why:
A newborn mammal…
razib | February 20, 2010An interesting exchange in Nature on ways to conceptualize the evolution of virulence. First, Adaptation and the evolution of parasite virulence in a connected world:
Adaptation is conventionally regarded as occurring at the level of the individual organism, where it functions to maximize the individual's inclusive fitness...However, it has recently been argued that empirical studies on the evolution of parasite virulence in spatial populations show otherwise...In particular, it has been claimed that the evolution of lower virulence in response to limited parasite dispersal...provides proof…
awild | May 31, 2008
30 years ago, biologists thought they'd solved one of Darwin's thorniest problems, the evolution of sterile social insects:
No doubt many instincts of very difficult explanation could be opposed to the theory of natural selection,âcases, in which we cannot see how an instinct could possibly have originated...I will not here enter on these several cases, but will confine myself to one special difficulty, which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to my whole theory. I allude to the neuters or sterile females in insect-communities: for these neuters often differ widely in…
bleimanb | January 9, 2008Why do some creatures forgo their own reproduction to help their relatives survive and reproduce? While we all might like to believe that naked mole rats really do care and are thus willing to sacrifice their creepy little lives for the good of the colony, the true answer probably has more to do with gene frequency across generations and evolution.
A scene from the 2003 ant remake of "Saving Private Ryan". Needless to say, it did not fare well at the box office.
Since the late 1950's, the idea of 'kin selection' has been the most widely accepted explanation for such bizarre behavior in…