Re: Article: Group selection, a theory whose time has come...again

Bob,

I would like to follow up briefly on your first comment. I snipped the rest
here.

I see how you can include group selection in your view based on variance in
mean individual fitnesses among groups. This is a pretty narrow view,
though, which limits group selection to being merely a consequence of
demographics (fitnesses of component individuals). Even allowing that
individual fitnesses can be influenced by group membership, this view does
not really attribute the same full "unit" status to groups that we typically
attribute to individuals.

For example, we wouldn't say that individuals constitute a level of
selection because the death and birth of cells (or alleles) can be
correlated, so one individual can have more cellular reproduction. If group
selection really represents an evolutionary process manifested at a higher
level of organization, rather than just a shadow of evolution a the
individual level, then I think we have to be able to appreciate groups as
unities. That is, we should be able to understand how selection acts on
them without reference to the fitnesses of their component individuals.

I suspect you are not willing to go this far down the multilevel selection
road at this point, but I wanted to point down the road and try to
illuminate what it looks like down there.

Cheers,

Guy


in article fjs2l6$lir$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Anon. at
bob.ohara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 12/13/07 11:54 AM:

Guy A Hoelzer wrote:
Hi Bob,

Your point of view ("it is still individuals that live and die") does not
seem to include any room for multilevel selection.

It does, simply because deaths (and lives! OK, births) can be
correlated, so one group can have more births for example.
[snip]


.

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