scholarly journals The sociobiology of sex: inclusive fitness consequences of inter-sexual interactions

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1600) ◽  
pp. 2314-2323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tommaso Pizzari ◽  
Andy Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Sexual Conflict ◽  
Indirect Effects ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Kin Recognition ◽  
Fitness Effects ◽  
Inclusive Fitness Theory ◽  
Fitness Consequences ◽  
Indirect Fitness ◽  
Population Viscosity

The diversity of social interactions between sexual partners has long captivated biologists, and its evolution has been interpreted largely in terms of ‘direct fitness’ pay-offs to partners and their descendants. Inter-sexual interactions also have ‘indirect effects’ by affecting the fitness of relatives, with important consequences for inclusive fitness. However, inclusive fitness arguments have received limited consideration in this context, and definitions of ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ fitness effects in this field are often inconsistent with those of inclusive fitness theory. Here, we use a sociobiology approach based on inclusive fitness theory to distinguish between direct and indirect fitness effects. We first consider direct effects: we review how competition leads to sexual conflict, and discuss the conditions under which repression of competition fosters sexual mutualism. We then clarify indirect effects, and show that greenbeard effects, kin recognition and population viscosity can all lead to episodes of indirect selection on sexual interactions creating potential for sexual altruism and spite. We argue that the integration of direct and indirect fitness effects within a sociobiology approach enables us to consider a more diverse spectrum of evolutionary outcomes of sexual interactions, and may help resolving current debates over sexual selection and sexual conflict.

scholarly journals Male relatedness and familiarity are required to modulate male-induced harm to females in Drosophila

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1860) ◽  
pp. 20170441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Le Page ◽  
Irem Sepil ◽  
Ewan Flintham ◽  
Tommaso Pizzari ◽  
Pau Carazo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Potential Role ◽  
Genetic Relatedness ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Kin Recognition ◽  
Female Reproduction ◽  
Fitness Effects ◽  
Inclusive Fitness Theory ◽  
Indirect Fitness ◽  
Female Lifespan

Males compete over mating and fertilization, and often harm females in the process. Inclusive fitness theory predicts that increasing relatedness within groups of males may relax competition and discourage male harm of females as males gain indirect benefits. Recent studies in Drosophila melanogaster are consistent with these predictions, and have found that within-group male relatedness increases female fitness, though others have found no effects. Importantly, these studies did not fully disentangle male genetic relatedness from larval familiarity, so the extent to which modulation of harm to females is explained by male familiarity remains unclear. Here we performed a fully factorial design, isolating the effects of male relatedness and larval familiarity on female harm. While we found no differences in male courtship or aggression, there was a significant interaction between male genetic relatedness and familiarity on female reproduction and survival. Relatedness among males increased female lifespan, reproductive lifespan and overall reproductive success, but only when males were familiar. By showing that both male relatedness and larval familiarity are required to modulate female harm, these findings reconcile previous studies, shedding light on the potential role of indirect fitness effects on sexual conflict and the mechanisms underpinning kin recognition in fly populations.

Evidence, Other Approaches, and Further Topics

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A.R. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Social Evolution ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Kin Recognition ◽  
Replicator Dynamics ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Price Equation ◽  
Evolution Theory ◽  
Inclusive Fitness Theory ◽  
The Many

This book has examined the genesis, the logic, and the generality of social evolution theory. In particular, it has presented evolutionary explanations of the many social behaviors we observe in the natural world by showing that William D. Hamilton's inclusive fitness theory provides the necessary generalization of classical Darwin–Wallace–Fisher fitness. This concluding chapter discusses the limitations of the analyses presented in this book and assesses the empirical support for inclusive fitness theory, focusing on microbial altruism, help in cooperative breeders, reproductive restraint in eusocial species, and the evolution of eusociality and cooperative breeding. It also considers more advanced topics in social evolution theory, including sex allocation, genetic kin recognition, spite, and the evolution of organismality. Finally, it reviews theoretical approaches to studying social evolution other than replicator dynamics and the Price equation, such as population genetics, class-structured populations, and maximization approaches.

What Is Fitness?

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A.R. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Reproductive Success ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Structured Populations ◽  
Reproductive Value ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Risk Of Death ◽  
Fitness Effects ◽  
Inclusive Fitness Theory ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Evolutionary Fitness

This chapter considers the problem of correctly defining fitness costs and benefits in inclusive fitness theory, when competition occurs between offspring who are relatives. It reviews the definition of evolutionary fitness and shows how its misinterpretation explains many previous misunderstandings as to whether inclusive fitness theory always makes accurate predictions. The chapter begins with a discussion of Haldane's dilemma, which can be formalized with fitness equations that show that the risk of death can make fitness effects all-or-nothing. It then examines how inclusive fitness models can be constructed to deal with reproductive value and class-structured populations. It also shows how costs and benefits can be expressed as payoffs that are proportional to reproductive success, as changes in production of offspring, or as changes in evolutionary fitness. Finally, it presents examples that illustrate when fitness, payoffs, and fecundity are different, and how inclusive fitness analyses can be performed properly in such situations.

Heritability, Maximization, and Evolutionary Explanations

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A.R. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Social Behaviors ◽  
Multilevel Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Processes ◽  
Fitness Effects ◽  
Group Fitness ◽  
Inclusive Fitness Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Explanations

This chapter examines which of the equivalent alternative partitions of fitness, including inclusive fitness and group fitness, can be interpreted as being subject to natural selection in a meaningful way. Inclusive fitness theory can deal with subtleties such as nonadditive fitness effects and conditionally expressed phenotypes. However, selection based on inclusive fitness gives equivalent predictions to other models of apparently different evolutionary processes, such as multilevel selection. The chapter considers how we can determine whether inclusive fitness really captures the essence of social evolution and whether inclusive fitness is really maximized by the action of selection, as suggested by William D. Hamilton. It also explains what heritability measures, and whether this makes sense biologically. Finally, it discusses the problem of classifying observed social behaviors in terms of their underlying evolutionary explanations.

scholarly journals Evolutionary dynamics of n -player games played by relatives

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1642) ◽  
pp. 20130359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hisashi Ohtsuki
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Genetic Association ◽  
Kin Selection ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Fitness Effects ◽  
Structured Population ◽  
Core Concepts

One of the core concepts in social evolution theory is kin selection. Kin selection provides a perspective to understand how natural selection operates when genetically similar individuals are likely to interact. A family-structured population is an excellent example of this, where relatives are engaged in social interactions. Consequences of such social interactions are often described in game-theoretical frameworks, but there is a growing consensus that a naive inclusive fitness accounting with dyadic relatedness coefficients are of limited use when non-additive fitness effects are essential in those situations. Here, I provide a general framework to analyse multiplayer interactions among relatives. Two important results follow from my analysis. First, it is generally necessary to know the n -tuple genetic association of family members when n individuals are engaged in social interactions. However, as a second result, I found that, for a special class of games, we need only measures of lower-order genetic association to fully describe its evolutionary dynamics. I introduce the concept of degree of the game and show how this degree is related to the degree of genetic association.

scholarly journals Inclusive fitness for in-laws

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 20180515 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Dyble ◽  
A. Gardner ◽  
L. Vinicius ◽  
A. B. Migliano
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Genetic Ancestry ◽  
Inclusive Fitness Theory ◽  
Indirect Fitness ◽  
Future Reproduction ◽  
Fitness Benefits ◽  
Related Individuals ◽  
Shared Genetic

Cooperation among kin is common across the natural world and can be explained in terms of inclusive fitness theory, which holds that individuals can derive indirect fitness benefits from aiding genetically related individuals. However, human kinship includes not only genetic kin but also kin by marriage: our affines (in-laws) and spouses. Can cooperation between these genetically unrelated kin be reconciled with inclusive fitness theory? Here, we argue that although affinal kin and spouses do not necessarily share genetic ancestry, they may have shared genetic interests in future reproduction and, as such, can derive indirect fitness benefits though cooperating. We use standard inclusive fitness theory to derive a coefficient of shared reproductive interest ( s ) that predicts altruistic investment both in genetic kin and in spouses and affines. Specifically, a behaviour that reduces the fitness of the actor by c and increases the fitness of the recipient by b will be favoured by natural selection when sb > c . We suggest that the coefficient of shared reproductive interest may provide a valuable tool for understanding not only the evolution of human kinship but also cooperation and conflict across the natural world more generally.

scholarly journals Human kin recognition is self- rather than family-referential

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Bressan ◽  
Guendalina Zucchi
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Kin Recognition ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Internal Representation ◽  
Inclusive Fitness Theory ◽  
Related Individuals ◽  
Close Family ◽  
Paternal Uncertainty

Inclusive fitness theory predicts that organisms will tend to help close kin more than less related individuals. In a variety of birds and mammals, relatives are recognized by comparing their phenotype to an internal representation or template, which might be learned through either repeated exposure to family members or self-inspection. Mirrors are ubiquitous now, but were absent during our evolutionary history; hence it is hard to predict, and empirically unknown, whether human kin recognition is family- or self-referential. Here we put this issue to the strongest possible test by comparing nepotistic behaviour towards self- versus co-twin-resemblant individuals. Seventy monozygotic and dizygotic twins were shown same-sex faces, covertly manipulated to resemble either themselves or their co-twin, and indicated which individual they would prefer in two prosocial contexts. Self-resemblant faces were significantly preferred to twin-resemblant faces, showing that visual information about the self supersedes that about close family members in the kin-recognition template. Because, under conditions of paternal uncertainty, a reliable family-referent template could be based only on one's mother and maternal relatives, a unique advantage of self-referent phenotype matching is the possibility of (consciously or unconsciously) identifying one's father and paternal relatives as kin.

scholarly journals Evolution of social behaviour in the primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata : do we need to look beyond kin selection?

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1687) ◽  
pp. 20150094 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raghavendra Gadagkar
Keyword(s):  
Kin Selection ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Kin Recognition ◽  
Ropalidia Marginata ◽  
Primitively Eusocial Wasp ◽  
Inclusive Fitness Theory ◽  
Dominant Female ◽  
Eusocial Wasp ◽  
Primitively Eusocial

Ropalidia marginata is a primitively eusocial wasp widely distributed in peninsular India. Although solitary females found a small proportion of nests, the vast majority of new nests are founded by small groups of females. In such multiple foundress nests, a single dominant female functions as the queen and lays eggs, while the rest function as sterile workers and care for the queen's brood. Previous attempts to understand the evolution of social behaviour and altruism in this species have employed inclusive fitness theory (kin selection) as a guiding framework. Although inclusive fitness theory is quite successful in explaining the high propensity of the wasps to found nests in groups, several features of their social organization suggest that forces other than kin selection may also have played a significant role in the evolution of this species. These features include lowering of genetic relatedness owing to polyandry and serial polygyny, nest foundation by unrelated individuals, acceptance of young non-nest-mates, a combination of well-developed nest-mate recognition and lack of intra-colony kin recognition, a combination of meek and docile queens and a decentralized self-organized work force, long reproductive queues with cryptic heir designates and conflict-free queen succession, all resulting in extreme intra-colony cooperation and inter-colony conflict.

Genetic similarity, human altruism, and group selection

1989 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Philippe Rushton
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Similarity ◽  
Group Selection ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Kin Recognition ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
Theoretical Support ◽  
Inclusive Fitness Theory ◽  
Biological Substrate ◽  
Many Sources

AbstractA new theory of attraction and liking based on kin selection suggests that people detect genetic similarity in others in order to give preferential treatment to those who are most similar to themselves. There are many sources of empirical and theoretical support for this view, including (1) the inclusive fitness theory of altruism, (2) kin recognition studies of animals raised apart, (3) assortative mating studies, (4) favoritism in families, (5) selective similarity among friends, and (6) ethnocentrism. Specific tests of the theory show that (1) sexually interacting couples who produce a child are genetically more similar to each other in blood antigens than they are either to sexually interacting couples who fail to produce a child or to randomly paired couples from the same sample; (2) similarity between marriage partners is most marked in the more genetically influenced of sets of anthropometric, cognitive, and personality characteristics; (3) after the death of a child, parental grief intensity is correlated with the child's similarity to the parent; (4) long-term male friendship pairs are more similar to each other in blood antigens than they are to random dyads from the same sample; and (5) similarity among best friends is most marked in the more genetically influenced of sets of attitudinal, personality, and anthropometric characteristics. The mechanisms underlying these findings may constitute a biological substrate of ethnocentrism, enabling group selection to occur.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document