Criticism
The theory of kin selection has had a profound impact on interpretations of genetic evolution of eusociality but it has been recently criticized in a paper in Nature by Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and E. O. Wilson. The authors argue that "Inclusive fitness theory is not a simplification over the standard approach. It is an alternative accounting method, but one that works only in a very limited domain. Whenever inclusive fitness does work, the results are identical to those of the standard approach. Inclusive fitness theory is an unnecessary detour, which does not provide additional insight or information." The authors argue for the use of a multi-level selection based model instead. Nowak et al.'s criticisms aroused a hostile response from a large section of the evolutionary biology community, including one reply published in Nature with over 100 authors.
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