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Suspending disbelief—of Wynne‐Edwards and his reception
Author(s) -
Pollock Gregory B.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
journal of evolutionary biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.289
H-Index - 128
eISSN - 1420-9101
pISSN - 1010-061X
DOI - 10.1046/j.1420-9101.1989.2030205.x
Subject(s) - kin selection , biology , sociality , population , philopatry , group selection , wright , selection (genetic algorithm) , sociology , evolutionary biology , biological dispersal , art , demography , artificial intelligence , computer science , art history
Critique of Wynne‐Edwards' views on population regulation and sociality suppose a population of discrete, mutually exclusive groups essential to his thought. Yet both his past and present work focus on continually distributed, philopatric populations; his critics have argued the untenability of a position never his own. Wynne‐Edwardsian ‘group selection’ focuses on local population productivity under philopatry. A ‘group’ is a local confluence of genotypes which need not be reified, and group selection consists of the differential replication (hence heritability) of the local social environment in which a genotype is embedded. Differential productivity contingent on social environment can eliminate some relational structures on genotypes in favor of others, creating an expanding wave of population productivity as in Wright's shifting balance metaphor. Such a process is inherent in the evolution of reciprocity, where cooperators must cluster to successfully invade a population of defectors. Regulation of resource exploitation in continuously distributed populations may be modeled as overlapping n‐person Prisoner's Dilemmas, where each individual participates in several distinct commons and defection represents local over‐exploitation of resources.