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Multilevel and kin selection in a connected world

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A Brief Communications Arising to this article was published on 18 February 2010

Abstract

Arising from: G. Wild, A. Gardner & S. A. West Nature 459, 983–986 (2009)10.1038/nature08071; Wild, Gardner & West reply

Wild et al.1 argue that the evolution of reduced virulence can be understood from the perspective of inclusive fitness, obviating the need to evoke group selection as a contributing causal factor. Although they acknowledge the mathematical equivalence of the inclusive fitness and multilevel selection approaches, they conclude that reduced virulence can be viewed entirely as an individual-level adaptation by the parasite1. Here we show that their model is a well-known special case of the more general theory of multilevel selection, and that the cause of reduced virulence resides in the opposition of two processes: within-group and among-group selection. This distinction is important in light of the current controversy among evolutionary biologists in which some continue to affirm that natural selection centres only and always at the level of the individual organism or gene, despite mathematical demonstrations that evolutionary dynamics must be described by selection at various levels in the hierarchy of biological organization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, 47405, Indiana, USA

    Michael J. Wade, James D. Bever, J. David Van Dyken & Peter Zee

  2. Departments of Biology and Anthropology, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, 13902, New York, USA

    David S. Wilson

  3. Department of Biology, University of Vermont, Burlington, 05405, Vermont, USA

    Charles Goodnight

  4. Department of Biology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 22904, Virginia, USA

    Doug Taylor, Edmund D. Brodie III & Peter Fields

  5. New England Complex Systems Institute, 24 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Yaneer Bar-Yam, Marcus A. M. de Aguiar, Blake Stacey & Justin Werfel

  6. Department of Biology, University of Nevada Reno, Reno, 89557, Nevada, USA

    Guy A. Hoelzer

  7. Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, V5A 1S6, British Columbia, Canada

    Felix Breden

  8. Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Centre for Social Evolution, Universitetparken 15, Copenhagen, DK-2100, Denmark

    Timothy A. Linksvayer

  9. Portland State University, Systems Science Graduate Program, Portland, 97207, Oregon, USA

    Jeffrey A. Fletcher

  10. Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California Davis, Davis, 95616, California, USA

    Peter J. Richerson

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  1. Michael J. Wade
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  2. David S. Wilson
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  3. Charles Goodnight
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  4. Doug Taylor
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  5. Yaneer Bar-Yam
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  7. Blake Stacey
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  8. Justin Werfel
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  9. Guy A. Hoelzer
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  10. Edmund D. Brodie III
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  11. Peter Fields
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  12. Felix Breden
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  13. Timothy A. Linksvayer
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  14. Jeffrey A. Fletcher
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  15. Peter J. Richerson
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  16. James D. Bever
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  17. J. David Van Dyken
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  18. Peter Zee
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Wade, M., Wilson, D., Goodnight, C. et al. Multilevel and kin selection in a connected world. Nature 463, E8–E9 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08809

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