Ultimate causes and the evolution of altruism |
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Authors: | James A R Marshall |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol, BS8 1UB Bristol, UK;(2) Present address: Department of Computer Science and Kroto Research Institute, University of Sheffield, S3 7HQ Sheffield, UK |
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Abstract: | Reconciling the evolution of altruism with Darwinian natural selection is frequently presented as a fundamental problem in
biology. In addition to an exponentially increasing literature on specific mechanisms that can permit altruism to evolve,
there has been a recent trend to establish general principles to explain altruism in populations undergoing natural selection.
This paper reviews and extends one approach to understanding the ultimate causes underlying the evolution of altruism and
mechanisms that can realise them, based on the Price equation. From the Price equation, we can see that such ultimate causes
equate to the different ways in which the frequency of an altruistic allele in a population can increase. Under this approach,
the ultimate causes underlying the evolution of altruism, given some positive fitness costs and benefits, are positive assortment
of altruistic alleles with the altruistic behaviour of others, positive deviations from additive fitness effects when multiple
altruists interact or bias in the inheritance of altruistic traits. In some cases, one cause can be interpreted in terms of
another. The ultimate causes thus identified can be realised by a number of different mechanisms, and to demonstrate its general
applicability, I use the Price equation approach to analyse a number of classical mechanisms known to support the evolution
of altruism (or cooperation): repeated interaction, ‘greenbeard’ traits, games played on graphs and payoff synergism. I also
briefly comment on other important points for the evolution of altruism, such as the ongoing debate over the predominant status
of inclusive fitness as the best way to understand its evolution. I conclude by arguing that analysing the evolution of altruism
in terms of its ultimate causes is the logical way to approach the problem and that, despite some of its technical limitations,
the Price equation approach is a particularly powerful way of doing so. |
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