Re: Article: Group selection, a theory whose time has come...again
- From: ragland31@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 23:40:47 -0500 (EST)
On Dec 5, 11:02 pm, Free_Phenotype <kohn.greg...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whilst gratifying my ego yesterday, I noticed this review in the Journal
of Evolutionary Biology:
<http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2007.01...>
West et al. argue that group selection is better approached as a variety
of kin selection
Kin selection is no doubt a very powerful and important factor in
selection at higher levels of organization, but there are many such
apparently altruistic phenomenon that can not be sufficiently or
directly explained by just looking at inclusive fitness. Alloparental
care is more common and widespread in nature then people like to think
(see specifically Avital 1998 "Adopting Adoption" and "A comparative
analysis of non-offspring nursing" by Lewis & Pusey 1992 in Animal
Behaviour), and often is a problem for individuals who hold a simply
gene-based view of heredity. Adoption and alloparental care can be
viewed as a very indirect form of kin selection, if there is a
disproportionate probability that your adopted offspring will serve a
potential mates (or better quality mates) for the foster parent
genetic offspring. As far as I know this has never been seriously
looked at, although sexual imprinting studies have shown evidence that
adopted offspring will prefer mates that have similar characteristics
to there foster parents.
Conformist transmission, where local adapted behavior is learned
socially from copying the behavior of the majority of individuals in a
a population, may have significant benefits at both the group and
individual level, by creating group specific ( and even in some cases
group binding) locally adaptive behavior. This is likely to benefit
the individual if the probability of adopting a locally adaptive
behavior increases with the number of individuals in the population
who express it. This mode of conformist non-genetic information
transfer (behavioral, cultural, dual-inheritance, ect...) may also
allow for previously family-centered behaviors (the are meant to
increase inclusive fitness) to be expressed in a wider social
context.
I know little about group selection but I have a question as it
relates to
the phenomenon of Nazism; was this a type of multilevel kin selection.
After all, one of the premises of Nazism was sacrificing yourself
towards the whole of the organism. It went beyond the direct family
but the nation of Germany was considered a whole organism.
If not, what kind of group selection was the phenomenon of Nazism.
Was it not group selection at all? On what basis. If it was a form of
group
selection, what kind was it? Also, I think we can think of "bad" and
"good"
group selections or is this mistaken as well. In war do we see
increased group
selection? Is group selection dependent upon homogenity or can it be
heterogeneous as well?
Michael Ragland
.
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