It sounds as though I like multi-level selection a bit more than you do.
I think so. I’m not quite so purist as Dawkins, but I am pretty close. But I do realize that it is not really an empirical scientific question. It is really simply a matter of what kind of models you prefer. Most cases in which group selection models work can also be explained just as well by individual-level selection or kin-selection.
Speaking of which:
I also find things like this one interesting:
“Senescence as an adaptation to limit the spread of disease”
Yes. Very interesting. Red Queen strikes again. But since they are already thinking about Bill Hamilton, why don’t they take the further step and realize that the senescent death of an old individual not only reduces the population density for the benefit of the group—the death specifically is beneficial to those individuals in the group who are the most immunologically similar to the deceased.
In other words, this mechanism ain’t Red Queen + Group Selection; it is Red Queen + Kin Selection.
Their model exhibits locality (with limited diffusion—V.N. or 5x5 neighbourhood) as well.
So: a death benefits kin not just through immunological similarity—but also because neighbours are likely to be kin—and death takes an adjacent pathogen load out of circulation.
I think so. I’m not quite so purist as Dawkins, but I am pretty close. But I do realize that it is not really an empirical scientific question. It is really simply a matter of what kind of models you prefer. Most cases in which group selection models work can also be explained just as well by individual-level selection or kin-selection.
Speaking of which:
Yes. Very interesting. Red Queen strikes again. But since they are already thinking about Bill Hamilton, why don’t they take the further step and realize that the senescent death of an old individual not only reduces the population density for the benefit of the group—the death specifically is beneficial to those individuals in the group who are the most immunologically similar to the deceased.
In other words, this mechanism ain’t Red Queen + Group Selection; it is Red Queen + Kin Selection.
Yes: sex and death!
Their model exhibits locality (with limited diffusion—V.N. or 5x5 neighbourhood) as well.
So: a death benefits kin not just through immunological similarity—but also because neighbours are likely to be kin—and death takes an adjacent pathogen load out of circulation.