Re: Fw: Edward O. Wilson's "bombshell" on the reality of group selection
- From: William Morse <wdmorse@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:42:30 -0400 (EDT)
"Robert Karl Stonjek" <rstonjek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:e5kkbl$11vr$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
The idea that group selection (or multilevel selection) could have any
validity is sometimes dismissed in rather derogatory terms on this
list. It may therefore come as a surprise that one of the main
"fathers" of ev psych, Edward O. Wilson, now theorizes that kin
selection is NOT the why of the evolution of eusocial insects, as
widely accepted, but rather group selection -- and the same seems to
hold true for humans.
In an interview in the June 2006 Discover Mag (pp. 58-61), Wilson says
that one reason he now rejects the "standard theory" he helped develop
is that there's very little evidence that ants and termites in the
early stages of evolution could determine who's a brother, sister,
cousin, etc. He says: "They're not acting to favor collateral kin.
The new view that I'm proposing is that it was group selection all
along, an idea first roughly formulated by Darwin."
The key to Wilson's new theory is the relatively recent recognition
that genes can be plastic in their expression, in response to
different environmental conditions. "So consider a gene that has
plasticity such that in one setting an individual carrying that gene
becomes reproductive. Maybe this individual was the ant or wasp that
arrived first, maybe it was the biggest one, or maybe it was the one
to just by accident start laying eggs first. The important thing is
that the reproductive role can shift from one colony to next and from
one generation to the next. The group forms, and some individuals by
circumstance become workers. Their cooperative behavior and the
division of labour confer superiority on that group, with that
particular gene, over other groups. It could be as simple as that."
Wilson explains that altruism is normally discouraged due to the
fitness advantages of individual survival and reproduction, but it
could pay for individuals to subvert their own interests to those of a
group if the group is able to defend and exploit a very valuable
resource (such as a hollow stem that could be a nest site). And once
ants and termites became "fully social" they went on to dominate the
world.
As for humans, Wilson agrees with Darwin that our evolution was
largely a matter of "tribe against tribe" -- which might explain the
endemic warfare AND
altruism in which humans have engaged since prehistory. "The genes
that favour this type of group cohesion would also favor an innate
sense of morality and group loyalty. It would explain how so often
group or tribe loyalty overrides even family loyalty." Seems like
there's already a ton of proposals along those lines....Wilson is
presumably working on clarifying why group selection, and not kin
selection, is the more significant mechanism (but at the end of the
interview he says his theorizing is still a work in progress and
formal presentation on humans might take a couple of years).
The full interview can be viewed (but subscription required) at:
http://www.discover.com/issues/jun-06/features/e-o-wilson/
Note: The "bombshell" in the title of this post is how Discover Mag
refers to the contents of the interview
Standard practice for a magazine - a description such as "E.O. Wilson has
decided that an older theory of evolution may be right after all in some
specific instances" doesn't sell much copy.
But I did finally get around to reading the article, and it was
interesting, albeit not in any depth - RKS has covered the main points
pretty well. The only one he leaves out is Wilson's differentiation
between the unit of selection - which he says is the gene - and the
target of selection, which he says is usually the individual but can be
the group in some instances.
William Hunt and Wirt Atmar have previously argued that haplodiploidy and
kin selection are not the only story in the social insects, and it
appears that Wilson now agrees. Unfortunately the article does not go
into detail on the type of model Wilson is using to arrive at group
selection.
Yours,
Bill Morse
.
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