Lecture 7 Flashcards
What does selection favour?
Close kin over distant kin, distant kin over strangers
Who established the Theory of Inclusive Fitness?
W.D Hamilton 1964
What is the theory of inclusive fitness?
A reformulation of the theory of natural selection
What is too narrow a concept to explain natural selection?
Personal reproductive success (personal fitness, classical, fitness, Darwinian fitness)
What would selection favour?
Traits that cause an organism’s genes to be passed on regardless of whether the organism produces offspring directly (eg. by helping ‘kin’)
What is Hamilton’s rule?
That organisms can increase fitness not only by producing their own offspring but also by helping genetic relatives to survive and reproduce
What is inclusive fitness?
It is the sum of the direct individual reproductive success PLUS the indirect effect of that individual’s actions on the reproductive success of genetic relatives. So individuals will help others but that help is mostly directed towards relatives.
How does the percentage of lineage work?
Percentage of founder’s genes in each direct descendant halves with each generation
What does number of founder’s genes surviving in each generation equal?
The number of individuals in that generation carrying those genes x proportion they carry
To what percentage are you related to each of your parents and each sibling and child?
50%
What are the three values used to quantify the kin selection advantage?
The benefit to the recipient (B)
The cost to the altruist (C)
The coefficient of relatedness (r)
Kin selection favors altruism when rB > C
If sibling 1 inherits the allele from parent A, what probability is there that sibling 2 will also inherit this allele?
1/2, which means that the ‘r’ between the two siblings is 1/2 (0.5)
Universal aspects of kinship was a study done by..
Daly, Salmon and Wilson
What should all kinship systems display?
Ego-centred kin terminology (eg. my mother, my father)
Distinctions along the lines of sex and generation (eg. grandfather, grandmother, grandson, granddaughter)
Organisation by ‘closeness’ and latter by relatedness (eg. first cousin, maternal grandmother)
Self-concept based on position within kin network (daughter, son, brother, sister)
ALSO
Cooperation and solidarity on basis of relatedness
Encouragement of younger members by elders to help ‘collateral’ kin
Individual knowledge of ‘real’ (blood) relatives
Use of kinship terms to influence behaviour of non-kin
What did empirical tests: human patterns of help show?
That many more acts of helping towards close kin among kin, helping increased as function of recipient’s reproductive value eg. flow of help from older to younger
Who was more likely to survive on the titanic?
Women and particularly women in couples. Men in couples were less likely to survive.
What did the wealth inheritance and relatedness do?
Analyzed the bequests of a recent sample of 1000 dead people with probated wills - 552 men, 448 women in Canada
What was the median estate size, the smallest and the largest?
Median - 52,800
Smallest - 1000
Largest - 2, 075, 700