LIFESCI 15 Lecture 8: Altruism and Conflict
Document Summary
Shared genes- more or less, depending on . Signals concerning likelihood of reciprocation: reputation, costs/benefits of action, words and actions attesting to your intentions (honest=better) Receiving gifts and favors properly is as important as giving gifts. In ants, bees, and wasps, female is diploid and male is haploid, so daughters get all of father"s genes and only half of mother"s genes. Coefficient of relatedness from mother to daughter is 0. 5, from female to sister is 0. 75. Result is that it is better to forgo reproduction and care for sisters because they have closest coefficient of relatedness to the individual than offspring. In naked mole rats, both are diploid, but the queen mates with males and produces offspring that do not reproduce. Because of hundreds or thousands of generations of inbreeding, all individuals in a population have extremely high coefficient of relatedness. When r is really large (as in inbred species), cooperation becomes extremely high.
