Biology 1001A Lecture Notes - Eusociality, Reciprocal Altruism

• School: Western University
• Department: Biology
• Course: Biology 1001A
• Professor: Tom Haffie

Document Summary

When an individual helps someone who they are genetically related to. They do this because they share the same alleles and the other wants to protect these alleles. An older sibling helps raise his full siblings. This is because they produce more alleles then if this sibling had of mated on its own. This is common in animals that are unsuccessful as inexperienced parents so to be a helper they learn how to raise their own young. Doing something that enhances the situation of another individual. Animals will help a nonrelative only if the favor will be returned. This is called reciprocal altruism: this is an element of cooperative behaviour. When thousands of genetically related individuals live and work together for the reproductive benefit of one individual, a queen and her mates. These workers may even die to protect their colonies. The bees have one queen who reproduces, she is diploid.