Group Selection - Group Selection Due To Differing ESSs

Group Selection Due To Differing ESSs

The problem with group selection is that for a whole group to get a single trait, it must spread through the whole group first by regular evolution. But, as J. L. Mackie suggested, when there are many different groups, each with a different Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS), there is selection between the different ESSs, since some are worse than others. For example, a group where altruism arose would outcompete a group where every creature acted in its own interest (see, for instance, the ESSs created by Koinophilia).

Read more about this topic:  Group Selection

Famous quotes containing the words group, selection, due and/or differing:

    Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.
    Willa Cather (1873–1947)

    When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
    itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
    nook and cranny
    Archie Randolph Ammons (b. 1926)

    Like to the Pontic Sea,
    Whose icy current and compulsive course
    Ne’er knows retiring ebb, but keeps due on
    To the Propontic and the Hellespont,
    Even so my bloody thoughts with violent pace
    Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love,
    Till that a capable and wide revenge
    Swallow them up.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    The spirit of the place is a strange thing. Our mechanical age tries to override it. But it does not succeed. In the end the strange, sinister spirit of the place, so diverse and adverse in differing places, will smash our mechanical oneness into smithereens.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)