Abstract
Individuals respond differently to environmental stresses, and often a subpopulation will respond more adaptively than the rest. The analogy with experiments on genetic assimilation suggests that such individuals are likely to share the genes responsible for their adaptive response. If the environmental stress in a social species is the presence of an innovative animal, the adaptive response may be imitation of the innovator by a subpopulation of individuals sharing genes responsible for this capacity. Small increments in the fitness of many such individuals may add up to a substantial selection pressure for the underlying genes. Since learning and imitation are not unitary abilities, but in all probability depend on underlying “computational elements,” analogous to the instruction set of a computer, “assimilative” selection of this sort may constitute a positive feedback process that continually favors genes that add to the population’s store of such elements. This hypothesis is consistent with such puzzling features of human social behavior as the enormous amount of time devoted to social intercourse and the disproportion between human intelligence and the demands placed upon it in primitive cultures. It is also compatible with the evolution of intelligence and a large brain size in non-tool-using social species such as whales and dolphins.
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Staddon, J.E.R. (1981). On a Possible Relation Between Cultural Transmission and Genetical Evolution. In: Bateson, P.P.G., Klopfer, P.H. (eds) Perspectives in Ethology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-7575-7_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-7575-7_6
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