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Extensive fitness and human cooperation

Evolution depends on the fitness of organisms, the expected rate of reproducing. Directly getting offspring is the most basic form of fitness, but fitness can also be increased indirectly by helping genetically related individuals (such as kin) to increase their fitness. The combined effect is known...

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Autor principal: van Hateren, J. H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4679791/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26374636
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12064-015-0214-6
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author van Hateren, J. H.
author_facet van Hateren, J. H.
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description Evolution depends on the fitness of organisms, the expected rate of reproducing. Directly getting offspring is the most basic form of fitness, but fitness can also be increased indirectly by helping genetically related individuals (such as kin) to increase their fitness. The combined effect is known as inclusive fitness. Here it is argued that a further elaboration of fitness has evolved, particularly in humans. It is called extensive fitness and it incorporates producing organisms that are merely similar in phenotype. The evolvability of this mechanism is illustrated by computations on a simple model combining heredity and behaviour. Phenotypes are driven into the direction of high fitness through a mechanism that involves an internal estimate of fitness, implicitly made within the organism itself. This mechanism has recently been conjectured to be responsible for producing agency and goals. In the model, inclusive and extensive fitness are both implemented by letting fitness increase nonlinearly with the size of subpopulations of similar heredity (for the indirect part of inclusive fitness) and of similar phenotype (for the phenotypic part of extensive fitness). Populations implementing extensive fitness outcompete populations implementing mere inclusive fitness. This occurs because groups with similar phenotype tend to be larger than groups with similar heredity, and fitness increases more when groups are larger. Extensive fitness has two components, a direct component where individuals compete in inducing others to become like them and an indirect component where individuals cooperate and help others who are already similar to them.
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spelling pubmed-46797912015-12-22 Extensive fitness and human cooperation van Hateren, J. H. Theory Biosci Original Article Evolution depends on the fitness of organisms, the expected rate of reproducing. Directly getting offspring is the most basic form of fitness, but fitness can also be increased indirectly by helping genetically related individuals (such as kin) to increase their fitness. The combined effect is known as inclusive fitness. Here it is argued that a further elaboration of fitness has evolved, particularly in humans. It is called extensive fitness and it incorporates producing organisms that are merely similar in phenotype. The evolvability of this mechanism is illustrated by computations on a simple model combining heredity and behaviour. Phenotypes are driven into the direction of high fitness through a mechanism that involves an internal estimate of fitness, implicitly made within the organism itself. This mechanism has recently been conjectured to be responsible for producing agency and goals. In the model, inclusive and extensive fitness are both implemented by letting fitness increase nonlinearly with the size of subpopulations of similar heredity (for the indirect part of inclusive fitness) and of similar phenotype (for the phenotypic part of extensive fitness). Populations implementing extensive fitness outcompete populations implementing mere inclusive fitness. This occurs because groups with similar phenotype tend to be larger than groups with similar heredity, and fitness increases more when groups are larger. Extensive fitness has two components, a direct component where individuals compete in inducing others to become like them and an indirect component where individuals cooperate and help others who are already similar to them. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2015-09-15 2015 /pmc/articles/PMC4679791/ /pubmed/26374636 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12064-015-0214-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2015 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Original Article
van Hateren, J. H.
Extensive fitness and human cooperation
title Extensive fitness and human cooperation
title_full Extensive fitness and human cooperation
title_fullStr Extensive fitness and human cooperation
title_full_unstemmed Extensive fitness and human cooperation
title_short Extensive fitness and human cooperation
title_sort extensive fitness and human cooperation
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4679791/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26374636
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12064-015-0214-6
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