Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the level of the individual or gene.
Early authors such as V. C. Wynne-Edwards and Konrad Lorenz
argued that the behavior of animals could affect their survival and
reproduction as groups, speaking for instance of actions for the good of
the species. In the 1930s, Ronald Fisher and J. B. S. Haldane proposed the concept of kin selection, a form of biological altruism from the gene-centered view of evolution,
arguing that animals should sacrifice for their relatives, and thereby
implying that they should not sacrifice for non-relatives. From the
mid-1960s, evolutionary biologists such as John Maynard Smith, W. D. Hamilton, George C. Williams, and Richard Dawkins argued that natural selection
acted primarily at the level of the gene. They argued on the basis of
mathematical models that individuals would not altruistically sacrifice fitness
for the sake of a group unless it would ultimately increase the
likelihood of an individual passing on their genes. A consensus emerged
that group selection did not occur, including in special situations such
as the haplodiploid social insects like honeybees (in the Hymenoptera),
where kin selection explains the behaviour of non-reproductives equally
well, since the only way for them to reproduce their genes is via kin.
In 1994 David Sloan Wilson and Elliott Sober
argued for multi-level selection, including group selection, on the
grounds that groups, like individuals, could compete. In 2010 three
authors including E. O. Wilson, known for his work on social insects especially ants, again revisited the arguments for group selection.
They argued that group selection can occur when competition between two
or more groups, some containing altruistic individuals who act
cooperatively together, is more important for survival than competition
between individuals within each group. A large group of ethologists conceded that while inclusive fitness may be debatable, it was still a useful theory in practice.
However, the vast majority of behavioural biologists have not been
convinced by renewed attempts to revisit group selection as a plausible
mechanism of evolution.
Early developments
Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution in his book, Origin of Species. Darwin also made the first suggestion of group selection in The Descent of Man that the evolution of groups could affect the survival of individuals. He wrote, "If one man in a tribe... invented a new snare or weapon, the tribe would increase in number, spread, and supplant other tribes. In a tribe thus rendered more numerous there would always be a rather better chance of the birth of other superior and inventive members."
Once Darwinism had been accepted in the modern synthesis
of the mid-twentieth century, animal behavior was glibly explained with
unsubstantiated hypotheses about survival value, which was largely
taken for granted. The naturalist Konrad Lorenz had argued loosely in books like On Aggression (1966) that animal behavior patterns were "for the good of the species", without actually studying survival value in the field. Richard Dawkins noted that Lorenz was a "'good of the species' man" so accustomed to group selection thinking that he did not realize his views "contravened orthodox Darwinian theory". The ethologist Niko Tinbergen
praised Lorenz for his interest in the survival value of behavior, and
naturalists enjoyed Lorenz's writings for the same reason. In 1962, group selection was used as a popular explanation for adaptation by the zoologist V. C. Wynne-Edwards. In 1976, Richard Dawkins wrote a well-known book on the importance of evolution at the level of the gene or the individual, The Selfish Gene.
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From the mid-1960s, evolutionary biologists argued that natural selection acted primarily at the level of the individual. In 1964, John Maynard Smith, C. M. Perrins (1964), and George C. Williams in his 1966 book Adaptation and Natural Selection cast serious doubt on group selection as a major mechanism of evolution; Williams's 1971 book Group Selection assembled writings from many authors on the same theme.
It was at that time generally agreed that this was the case even for eusocial insects such as honeybees, which encourages kin selection, since workers are closely related.
Kin selection and inclusive fitness theory
Experiments from the late 1970s suggested that selection involving groups was possible.
Early group selection models assumed that genes acted independently,
for example a gene that coded for cooperation or altruism. Genetically
based reproduction of individuals implies that, in group formation, the
altruistic genes would need a way to act for the benefit of members in
the group to enhance the fitness of many individuals with the same gene.
But it is expected from this model that individuals of the same species
would compete against each other for the same resources. This would put
cooperating individuals at a disadvantage, making genes for cooperation
likely to be eliminated. Group selection on the level of the species is
flawed because it is difficult to see how selective pressures would be
applied to competing/non-cooperating individuals.
Kin selection between related individuals is accepted as an explanation of altruistic behavior. R.A. Fisher in 1930 and J.B.S. Haldane in 1932
set out the mathematics of kin selection, with Haldane famously joking
that he would willingly die for two brothers or eight cousins.
In this model, genetically related individuals cooperate because
survival advantages to one individual also benefit kin who share some
fraction of the same genes, giving a mechanism for favoring genetic
selection.
Inclusive fitness theory, first proposed by W. D. Hamilton
in the early 1960s, gives a selection criterion for evolution of social
traits when social behavior is costly to an individual organism's
survival and reproduction. The criterion is that the reproductive
benefit to relatives who carry the social trait, multiplied by their
relatedness (the probability that they share the altruistic trait)
exceeds the cost to the individual. Inclusive fitness theory is a
general treatment of the statistical probabilities of social traits
accruing to any other organisms likely to propagate a copy of the same
social trait. Kin selection theory treats the narrower but simpler case
of the benefits to close genetic relatives (or what biologists call
'kin') who may also carry and propagate the trait. A significant group
of biologists support inclusive fitness as the explanation for social
behavior in a wide range of species, as supported by experimental data.
An article was published in Nature with over a hundred coauthors.
One of the questions about kin selection is the requirement that
individuals must know if other individuals are related to them, or kin recognition.
Any altruistic act has to preserve similar genes. One argument given by
Hamilton is that many individuals operate in "viscous" conditions, so
that they live in physical proximity to relatives. Under these
conditions, they can act altruistically to any other individual, and it
is likely that the other individual will be related. This population
structure builds a continuum between individual selection, kin
selection, kin group selection and group selection without a clear
boundary for each level. However, early theoretical models by D.S.
Wilson et al. and Taylor
showed that pure population viscosity cannot lead to cooperation and
altruism. This is because any benefit generated by kin cooperation is
exactly cancelled out by kin competition; additional offspring from
cooperation are eliminated by local competition. Mitteldorf and D. S.
Wilson later showed that if the population is allowed to fluctuate, then
local populations can temporarily store the benefit of local
cooperation and promote the evolution of cooperation and altruism.
By assuming individual differences in adaptations, Yang further showed
that the benefit of local altruism can be stored in the form of
offspring quality and thus promote the evolution of altruism even if the
population does not fluctuate. This is because local competition among
more individuals resulting from local altruism increases the average
local fitness of the individuals that survive.
Another explanation for the recognition of genes for altruism is that a single trait, group reciprocal kindness,
is capable of explaining the vast majority of altruism that is
generally accepted as "good" by modern societies. The phenotype of
altruism relies on recognition of the altruistic behavior by itself. The
trait of kindness will be recognized by sufficiently intelligent and
undeceived organisms in other individuals with the same trait. Moreover,
the existence of such a trait predicts a tendency for kindness to
unrelated organisms that are apparently kind, even if the organisms are
of another species. The gene need not be exactly the same, so long as
the effect or phenotype is similar. Multiple versions of the gene—or
even meme—would have virtually the same effect. This explanation was given by Richard Dawkins as an analogy of a man with a green beard.
Green-bearded men are imagined as tending to cooperate with each other
simply by seeing a green beard, where the green beard trait is
incidentally linked to the reciprocal kindness trait.
Multilevel selection theory
Kin selection or inclusive fitness is accepted as an explanation for cooperative behavior in many species, but the scientist David Sloan Wilson argues that human behavior is difficult to explain with only this approach. In particular, he claims it does not seem to explain the rapid rise of human civilization. Wilson has argued that other factors must also be considered in evolution. Wilson and others have continued to develop group selection models.
Early group selection models were flawed because they assumed
that genes acted independently; but genetically based interactions among
individuals are ubiquitous in group formation because genes must
cooperate for the benefit of association in groups to enhance the
fitness of group members.
Additionally, group selection on the level of the species is flawed
because it is difficult to see how selective pressures would be applied;
selection in social species of groups against other groups, rather than
the species entire, seems to be the level at which selective pressures
are plausible. On the other hand, kin selection is accepted as an
explanation of altruistic behavior.
Some biologists argue that kin selection and multilevel selection are
both needed to "obtain a complete understanding of the evolution of a
social behavior system".
In 1994, David Sloan Wilson and Elliott Sober
argued that the case against group selection had been overstated. They
considered whether groups can have functional organization in the same
way as individuals, and consequently whether groups can be "vehicles"
for selection.
They do not posit evolution on the level of the species, but selective
pressures that winnow out small groups within a species, e.g. groups of
social insects or primates. Groups that cooperate better might survive
and reproduce more than those that did not. Resurrected in this way,
Wilson & Sober's new group selection is called multilevel selection
theory.
In 2010, Martin Nowak, C. E. Tarnita and E. O. Wilson
argued for multi-level selection, including group selection, to correct
what they saw as deficits in the explanatory power of inclusive
fitness.
A response from 137 other evolutionary biologists argued "that their
arguments are based upon a misunderstanding of evolutionary theory and a
misrepresentation of the empirical literature".
Wilson compared the layers of competition and evolution to nested sets of Russian matryoshka dolls. The lowest level is the genes, next come the cells, then the organism
level and finally the groups. The different levels function cohesively
to maximize fitness, or reproductive success. The theory asserts that
selection for the group level, involving competition between groups,
must outweigh the individual level, involving individuals competing
within a group, for a group-benefiting trait to spread.
Multilevel selection theory focuses on the phenotype because it looks at the levels that selection directly acts upon.
For humans, social norms can be argued to reduce individual level
variation and competition, thus shifting selection to the group level.
The assumption is that variation between different groups is larger than
variation within groups. Competition and selection can operate at all
levels regardless of scale. Wilson wrote, "At all scales, there must be
mechanisms that coordinate the right kinds of action and prevent
disruptive forms of self-serving behavior at lower levels of social
organization."
E. O. Wilson summarized, "In a group, selfish individuals beat
altruistic individuals. But, groups of altruistic individuals beat
groups of selfish individuals."
Wilson ties the multilevel selection theory regarding humans to another theory, gene–culture coevolution,
by acknowledging that culture seems to characterize a group-level
mechanism for human groups to adapt to environmental changes.
MLS theory can be used to evaluate the balance between group selection and individual selection in specific cases.
An experiment by William Muir compared egg productivity in hens,
showing that a hyper-aggressive strain had been produced through
individual selection, leading to many fatal attacks after only six
generations; by implication, it could be argued that group selection
must have been acting to prevent this in real life. Group selection has most often been postulated in humans and, notably, eusocial Hymenoptera that make cooperation a driving force of their adaptations over time and have a unique system of inheritance involving haplodiploidy that allows the colony to function as an individual while only the queen reproduces.
Wilson and Sober's work revived interest in multilevel selection. In a 2005 article,
E. O. Wilson argued that kin selection could no longer be thought of as
underlying the evolution of extreme sociality, for two reasons. First,
he suggested, the argument that haplodiploid
inheritance (as in the Hymenoptera) creates a strong selection pressure
towards nonreproductive castes is mathematically flawed. Second, eusociality
no longer seems to be confined to the hymenopterans; increasing numbers
of highly social taxa have been found in the years since Wilson's
foundational text Sociobiology: A New Synthesis was published in 1975. These including a variety of insect species, as well as two rodent species (the naked mole-rat and the Damaraland mole rat). Wilson suggests the equation for Hamilton's rule:
- rb > c
(where b represents the benefit to the recipient of altruism, c the cost to the altruist, and r their degree of relatedness) should be replaced by the more general equation
- rbk + be > c
in which bk is the benefit to kin (b in the original equation) and be
is the benefit accruing to the group as a whole. He then argues that,
in the present state of the evidence in relation to social insects, it
appears that be>rbk, so that altruism needs to
be explained in terms of selection at the colony level rather than at
the kin level. However, kin selection and group selection are not
distinct processes, and the effects of multi-level selection are already
accounted for in Hamilton's rule, rb>c, provided that an expanded definition of r, not requiring Hamilton's original assumption of direct genealogical relatedness, is used, as proposed by E. O. Wilson himself.
Spatial populations of predators and prey show restraint of reproduction at equilibrium, both individually and through social communication, as originally proposed by Wynne-Edwards. While these spatial populations do not have well-defined groups for group selection, the local spatial interactions of organisms in transient groups are sufficient to lead to a kind of multi-level selection. There is however as yet no evidence that these processes operate in the situations where Wynne-Edwards posited them.
Rauch et al.'s analysis of host-parasite
evolution is broadly hostile to group selection. Specifically, the
parasites do not individually moderate their transmission; rather, more
transmissible variants – which have a short-term but unsustainable
advantage – arise, increase, and go extinct.
Applications
Differing evolutionarily stable strategies
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, there is selection between the different strategies, since some are worse than others.
For example, a group where altruism was universal would indeed
outcompete a group where every creature acted in its own interest, so
group selection might seem feasible; but a mixed group of altruists and
non-altruists would be vulnerable to cheating by non-altruists within
the group, so group selection would collapse.
Implications in population biology
Social behaviors such as altruism and group relationships can impact many aspects of population dynamics, such as intraspecific competition and interspecific
interactions. In 1871, Darwin argued that group selection occurs when
the benefits of cooperation or altruism between subpopulations are
greater than the individual benefits of egotism within a subpopulation.
This supports the idea of multilevel selection, but kinship also plays
an integral role because many subpopulations are composed of closely
related individuals. An example of this can be found in lions, which are
simultaneously cooperative and territorial.
Within a pride, males protect the pride from outside males, and
females, who are commonly sisters, communally raise cubs and hunt.
However, this cooperation seems to be density dependent. When resources
are limited, group selection favors prides that work together to hunt.
When prey is abundant, cooperation is no longer beneficial enough to
outweigh the disadvantages of altruism, and hunting is no longer
cooperative.
Interactions between different species can also be affected by
multilevel selection. Predator-prey relationships can also be affected.
Individuals of certain monkey species howl to warn the group of the
approach of a predator.
The evolution of this trait benefits the group by providing protection,
but could be disadvantageous to the individual if the howling draws the
predator's attention to them. By affecting these interspecific
interactions, multilevel and kinship selection can change the population
dynamics of an ecosystem.
Multilevel selection attempts to explain the evolution of altruistic behavior in terms of quantitative genetics. Increased frequency or fixation of altruistic alleles
can be accomplished through kin selection, in which individuals engage
in altruistic behavior to promote the fitness of genetically similar
individuals such as siblings. However, this can lead to inbreeding depression,
which typically lowers the overall fitness of a population. However, if
altruism were to be selected for through an emphasis on benefit to the
group as opposed to relatedness and benefit to kin, both the altruistic
trait and genetic diversity could be preserved. However, relatedness
should still remain a key consideration in studies of multilevel
selection. Experimentally imposed multilevel selection on Japanese quail
was more effective by an order of magnitude on closely related kin
groups than on randomized groups of individuals.
Gene-culture coevolution in humans
Gene-culture coevolution
(also called dual inheritance theory) is a modern hypothesis
(applicable mostly to humans) that combines evolutionary biology and
modern sociobiology to indicate group selection.
It is believed that this approach of combining genetic influence with
cultural influence over several generations is not present in the other
hypotheses such as reciprocal altruism and kin selection, making
gene-culture evolution one of the strongest realistic hypotheses for
group selection. Fehr provides evidence of group selection taking place
in humans presently with experimentation through logic games such as
prisoner's dilemma, the type of thinking that humans have developed many
generations ago.
Gene-culture coevolution allows humans to develop highly distinct
adaptations to the local pressures and environments more quickly than
with genetic evolution alone. Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson,
two strong proponents of cultural evolution, postulate that the act of
social learning, or learning in a group as done in group selection,
allows human populations to accrue information over many generations.
This leads to cultural evolution of behaviors and technology alongside
genetic evolution. Boyd and Richerson believe that the ability to
collaborate evolved during the Middle Pleistocene, a million years ago, in response to a rapidly changing climate.
In 2003, the behavioral scientist Herbert Gintis
examined cultural evolution statistically, offering evidence that
societies that promote pro-social norms have higher survival rates than
societies that do not.
Gintis wrote that genetic and cultural evolution can work together.
Genes transfer information in DNA, and cultures transfer information
encoded in brains, artifacts, or documents. Language, tools, lethal
weapons, fire, cooking, etc., have a long-term effect on genetics. For
example, cooking led to a reduction of size of the human gut, since less
digestion is needed for cooked food. Language led to a change in the
human larynx and an increase in brain size. Projectile weapons led to
changes in human hands and shoulders, such that humans are much better
at throwing objects than the closest human relative, the chimpanzee.
In 2015, William Yaworsky and colleagues surveyed the opinions of anthropologists on group selection, finding that these varied with the gender and politics of the social scientists concerned. In 2019, Howard Rachlin and colleagues proposed group selection of behavioural patterns, such as learned altruism, during ontogeny parallel to group selection during phylogeny.
Criticism
The use of the Price equation to support group selection was challenged by van Veelen in 2012, arguing that it is based on invalid mathematical assumptions.
Advocates of the gene-centered view of evolution such as Dawkins and Daniel Dennett remain unconvinced about group selection. Dawkins suggests that group selection fails to make an appropriate distinction between replicators and vehicles. The evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne summarizes the arguments in The New York Review of Books in non-technical terms as follows:
Group selection isn't widely accepted by evolutionists for several reasons. First, it's not an efficient way to select for traits, like altruistic behavior, that are supposed to be detrimental to the individual but good for the group. Groups divide to form other groups much less often than organisms reproduce to form other organisms, so group selection for altruism would be unlikely to override the tendency of each group to quickly lose its altruists through natural selection favoring cheaters. Further, little evidence exists that selection on groups has promoted the evolution of any trait. Finally, other, more plausible evolutionary forces, like direct selection on individuals for reciprocal support, could have made humans prosocial. These reasons explain why only a few biologists, like [David Sloan] Wilson and E. O. Wilson (no relation), advocate group selection as the evolutionary source of cooperation.
The psychologist Steven Pinker states that "group selection has no useful role to play in psychology or social science", since in these domains it "is not a precise implementation of the theory of natural selection, as it is, say, in genetic algorithms or artificial life simulations. Instead [in psychology] it is a loose metaphor, more like the struggle among kinds of tires or telephones."
