PSYC 3201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Genic, Group Selection
12 Dec 2016
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Genes battle it out for survival, not the individuals themselves. The organism is merely the gene"s way of preserving the genes. Faced with a dilemma if individual selection is right you should observe fluctuating population sizes based on resources. But what he saw is that if the resources fluctuated, the group size matched that change. Selection favors social behaviors that limit reproduction to avoid overexploitation of available food resources (social behaviors adjust population size in accord with the available food resources) Selection favors social behaviors that adjust population density at optimum levels in relation to fluctuating resources. Social behaviors: territoriality, social dominance, altruism. Essence of group selection is that a trait will evolve if: Reproductive restraint confers reproductive advantages on the entire group. Selfish reproduction is disadvantageous to the group. Example: different birds have their own territory. But each bird has individual rights to the territory (water, mate, food, etc).
