scholarly journals Lifetime monogamy and the evolution of eusociality

2009 ◽  
Vol 364 (1533) ◽  
pp. 3191-3207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacobus J. Boomsma
Keyword(s):  
Parameter Space ◽  
Colony Size ◽  
Cooperative Breeding ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Levels Of Selection ◽  
Hamilton’S Rule ◽  
Evolution Of Eusociality ◽  
Small Benefit ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Hamilton's Rule

All evidence currently available indicates that obligatory sterile eusocial castes only arose via the association of lifetime monogamous parents and offspring. This is consistent with Hamilton's rule ( br s > r o c ), but implies that relatedness cancels out of the equation because average relatedness to siblings ( r s ) and offspring ( r o ) are both predictably 0.5. This equality implies that any infinitesimally small benefit of helping at the maternal nest ( b ), relative to the cost in personal reproduction ( c ) that persists throughout the lifespan of entire cohorts of helpers suffices to establish permanent eusociality, so that group benefits can increase gradually during, but mostly after the transition. The monogamy window can be conceptualized as a singularity comparable with the single zygote commitment of gametes in eukaryotes. The increase of colony size in ants, bees, wasps and termites is thus analogous to the evolution of multicellularity. Focusing on lifetime monogamy as a universal precondition for the evolution of obligate eusociality simplifies the theory and may help to resolve controversies about levels of selection and targets of adaptation. The monogamy window underlines that cooperative breeding and eusociality are different domains of social evolution, characterized by different sectors of parameter space for Hamilton's rule.

Hamilton’s Rule as an Organizing Framework

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Birch
Keyword(s):  
Social Evolution ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Breeding Value ◽  
Price Equation ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Hamilton’S Rule ◽  
Indirect Fitness ◽  
The Mean ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Hamilton's Rule

Queller’s version of Hamilton’s rule (HRG), derived from the Price equation, states that the mean breeding value for a social character increases if and only if rb > c, where r is the coefficient of relatedness between social partners, b is the benefit conferred on recipients, and c is the cost incurred by actors. The value of HRG lies in its ability to provide an organizing framework for social evolution theory, helping us to interpret, classify, and compare more detailed models of particular scenarios. HRG does this by allowing us to classify causal explanations of positive change by their commitments regarding the sign of rb and c. This leads to a four-part taxonomy of explanations, comprising indirect fitness explanations, direct fitness explanations, hybrid explanations, and wholly or partially non-selective explanations. There are plausible instances of all four categories in the natural world.

Social Evolution, Hamilton’s Rule, and Inclusive Fitness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samir Okasha
Keyword(s):  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Popular Approach ◽  
Hamilton’S Rule ◽  
Inclusive Fitness Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Encounters ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Hamilton's Rule

Inclusive fitness theory, originally due to W. D. Hamilton, is a popular approach to the study of social evolution, but shrouded in controversy. The theory contains two distinct aspects: Hamilton’s rule (rB > C); and the idea that individuals will behave as if trying to maximize their inclusive fitness in social encounters. These two aspects of the theory are logically separable but often run together. A generalized version of Hamilton’s rule can be formulated that is always true, though whether it is causally meaningful is debatable. However, the individual maximization claim only holds true if the payoffs from the social encounter are additive. The notion that inclusive fitness is the ‘goal’ of individuals’ social behaviour is less robust than some of its advocates acknowledge.

scholarly journals Quantitative genetic versions of Hamilton's rule with empirical applications

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1642) ◽  
pp. 20130358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel W. McGlothlin ◽  
Jason B. Wolf ◽  
Edmund D. Brodie ◽  
Allen J. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Genetics ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Critical Parameters ◽  
Simple Extension ◽  
Hamilton’S Rule ◽  
Quantitative Genetic ◽  
Hamilton's Rule

Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness revolutionized our understanding of the evolution of social interactions. Surprisingly, an incorporation of Hamilton's perspective into the quantitative genetic theory of phenotypic evolution has been slow, despite the popularity of quantitative genetics in evolutionary studies. Here, we discuss several versions of Hamilton's rule for social evolution from a quantitative genetic perspective, emphasizing its utility in empirical applications. Although evolutionary quantitative genetics offers methods to measure each of the critical parameters of Hamilton's rule, empirical work has lagged behind theory. In particular, we lack studies of selection on altruistic traits in the wild. Fitness costs and benefits of altruism can be estimated using a simple extension of phenotypic selection analysis that incorporates the traits of social interactants. We also discuss the importance of considering the genetic influence of the social environment, or indirect genetic effects (IGEs), in the context of Hamilton's rule. Research in social evolution has generated an extensive body of empirical work focusing—with good reason—almost solely on relatedness. We argue that quantifying the roles of social and non-social components of selection and IGEs, in addition to relatedness, is now timely and should provide unique additional insights into social evolution.

scholarly journals Helping in cooperatively breeding long-tailed tits: a test of Hamilton's rule

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1642) ◽  
pp. 20130565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben J. Hatchwell ◽  
Philippa R. Gullett ◽  
Mark J. Adams
Keyword(s):  
Social Evolution ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Alloparental Care ◽  
Hamilton’S Rule ◽  
Long Term Study ◽  
Inclusive Fitness Theory ◽  
Cooperatively Breeding ◽  
Helping Behaviour ◽  
Hamilton's Rule

Inclusive fitness theory provides the conceptual framework for our current understanding of social evolution, and empirical studies suggest that kin selection is a critical process in the evolution of animal sociality. A key prediction of inclusive fitness theory is that altruistic behaviour evolves when the costs incurred by an altruist ( c ) are outweighed by the benefit to the recipient ( b ), weighted by the relatedness of altruist to recipient ( r ), i.e. Hamilton's rule rb > c . Despite its central importance in social evolution theory, there have been relatively few empirical tests of Hamilton's rule, and hardly any among cooperatively breeding vertebrates, leading some authors to question its utility. Here, we use data from a long-term study of cooperatively breeding long-tailed tits Aegithalos caudatus to examine whether helping behaviour satisfies Hamilton's condition for the evolution of altruism. We show that helpers are altruistic because they incur survival costs through the provision of alloparental care for offspring. However, they also accrue substantial benefits through increased survival of related breeders and offspring, and despite the low average relatedness of helpers to recipients, these benefits of helping outweigh the costs incurred. We conclude that Hamilton's rule for the evolution of altruistic helping behaviour is satisfied in this species.

scholarly journals Social evolution and genetic interactions in the short and long term

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Van Cleve
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Game Theory ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Game ◽  
Genetic Interactions ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Hamilton’S Rule ◽  
Analytical Approaches ◽  
Hamilton's Rule

The evolution of social traits remains one of the most fascinating and feisty topics in evolutionary biology even after half a century of theoretical research. W. D. Hamilton shaped much of the field initially with his 1964 papers that laid out the foundation for understanding the effect of genetic relatedness on the evolution of social behavior. Early theoretical investigations revealed two critical assumptions required for Hamilton's rule to hold in dynamical models: weak selection and additive genetic interactions. However, only recently have analytical approaches from population genetics and evolutionary game theory developed sufficiently so that social evolution can be studied under the joint action of selection, mutation, and genetic drift. We review how these approaches suggest two timescales for evolution under weak mutation: (i) a short-term timescale where evolution occurs between a finite set of alleles, and (ii) a long-term timescale where a continuum of alleles are possible and populations evolve continuously from one monomorphic trait to another. We show how Hamilton's rule emerges from the short-term analysis under additivity and how non-additive genetic interactions can be accounted for more generally. This short-term approach reproduces, synthesizes, and generalizes many previous results including the one-third law from evolutionary game theory and risk dominance from economic game theory. Using the long-term approach, we illustrate how trait evolution can be described with a diffusion equation that is a stochastic analogue of the canonical equation of adaptive dynamics. Peaks in the stationary distribution of the diffusion capture classic notions of convergence stability from evolutionary game theory and generally depend on the additive genetic interactions inherent in Hamilton's rule. Surprisingly, the peaks of the long-term stationary distribution can predict the effects of simple kinds of non-additive interactions. Additionally, the peaks capture both weak and strong effects of social payoffs in a manner difficult to replicate with the short-term approach. Together, the results from the short and long-term approaches suggest both how Hamilton's insight may be robust in unexpected ways and how current analytical approaches can expand our understanding of social evolution far beyond Hamilton's original work.

scholarly journals The benefits of grouping as a main driver of social evolution in a halictine bee

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
pp. e1700741 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusaku Ohkubo ◽  
Tatsuhiro Yamamoto ◽  
Natsuki Ogusu ◽  
Saori Watanabe ◽  
Yuuka Murakami ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Evolution ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Nest Defense ◽  
The Past ◽  
Hamilton’S Rule ◽  
Main Driver ◽  
Relatedness Asymmetry ◽  
Hamilton's Rule

Over the past decade, the cause of sociality has been much debated. Inclusive fitness [brin Hamilton’s rule (br−c> 0)] has been criticized but is still useful in the organization of a framework by elucidating mechanisms through whichbr(benefit × relatedness) becomes larger thanc(cost). The beeLasioglossum baleicumis suitable for investigation of this issue because of the sympatric occurrence of both social and solitary nesting in its populations. We show that a large part (approximately 92%) of the inclusive fitness of a eusocial worker can be attributed to the benefits of grouping. A 1.5-fold relatedness asymmetry benefit in singly mated haplo-diploids explains a small part (approximately 8.5%) of the observed inclusive fitness. Sociality enables this species to conduct foraging and nest defense simultaneously, which is not the case in solitary nests. Our results indicate that this benefit of grouping is the main source of the increased inclusive fitness of eusocial workers.

The Philosophy of Social Evolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Birch
Keyword(s):  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Hamilton’S Rule ◽  
Social Traits ◽  
Hamilton's Rule ◽  
The Way

From microbes to humans, the natural world is full of spectacular examples of social behaviour. In the 1960s, W. D. Hamilton introduced three key innovations—now known as Hamilton’s rule, kin selection, and inclusive fitness—that changed the way we think about how social behaviour evolves, beginning a research program now known as social evolution theory. This is a book about the philosophical foundations and future prospects of that program. Part I, ‘Foundations’, provides a philosophical analysis of Hamilton’s core ideas, with some modifications along the way. We will see that Hamilton’s rule provides a compelling way of organizing our thinking about the ultimate causes of social behaviour; and we will see how, in inclusive fitness, Hamilton found a fitness concept with a special role to play in explaining cumulative adaptation. Part II, ‘Extensions’, shows how these ideas, when extended in certain ways, can help us understand cooperation in micro-organisms, cooperation among the cells of a multicellular organism, and culturally evolved cooperation in the earliest human societies. In all these cases and more, living things cooperate because they are related, where the concept of relatedness picks out relevant statistical patterns of similarity in the transmissible basis (genetic or otherwise) of social traits.

scholarly journals The causal meaning of Hamilton’s rule

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 160037 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samir Okasha ◽  
Johannes Martens
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Biological Significance ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Partial Regression ◽  
Hamilton’S Rule ◽  
Hypothetical Experiment ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Original Derivation ◽  
Hamilton's Rule ◽  
Exact Version

Hamilton’s original derivation of his rule for the spread of an altruistic gene ( rb > c ) assumed additivity of costs and benefits. Recently, it has been argued that an exact version of the rule holds under non-additive pay-offs, so long as the cost and benefit terms are suitably defined, as partial regression coefficients. However, critics have questioned both the biological significance and the causal meaning of the resulting rule. This paper examines the causal meaning of the generalized Hamilton’s rule in a simple model, by computing the effect of a hypothetical experiment to assess the cost of a social action and comparing it to the partial regression definition. The two do not agree. A possible way of salvaging the causal meaning of Hamilton’s rule is explored, by appeal to R. A. Fisher’s ‘average effect of a gene substitution’.

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