Biology 1001A Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Eusociality, Ground Squirrel, Overgrazing
3 Dec 2012
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Selection is fundamentally competitive, yet group living and cooperation are common. Altruism is a special dif culty, which at rst appeared to me insuperable and actually fatal to my whole theory - charles darwin. Success of offspring may come at the cost of parent survival. When an individual risks their own tness to protect others to whom the are not related, it is altruism because the risk results in not increase in tness to the protector. An example of this is the ground squirrel, where an adult will risk being located by a predator in order to warn the young ground squirrels of the danger. Sometimes, an individual offspring will forgo their own opportunity to reproduce in order to help their parents produce more offspring. This was traditionally explained as sacri cing individual tness for the good of the group , but this is not exactly correct.
