Evidence map›Paper›PMID 27158472›Full record

ReviewF1000Research2016

Kin and multilevel selection in social evolution: a never-ending controversy?

Jos Kramer, Joël Meunier

Abstract readReview
In one paragraph

Review in F1000Research, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
21citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

21 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. The social formation of fitness: lifetime consequences of prenatal nutrition and postnatal care in a wild mammal population.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Toward a theory of evolution as multilevel learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022
    Article
  6. Review
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Death happy: adaptive ageing and its evolution by kin selection in organisms with colonial ecology.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021
    Article
  10. Review
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. The Price equation and the unity of social evolution theory.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020
    Article
  14. Review
  15. Article
  16. Review
  17. Article
  18. Mate limitation and sex ratio evolution.Royal Society open science · 2018
    Article
  19. Article
  20. Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Jos KramerZoological Institute, Evolutionary Biology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany.
Joël MeunierZoological Institute, Evolutionary Biology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany; Institut de Recherche sur la Biologie de l'Insecte, UMR 7261, CNRS, Université François Rabelais, Tours, France.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Kin selection and multilevel selection are two major frameworks in evolutionary biology that aim at explaining the evolution of social behaviors. However, the relationship between these two theories has been plagued by controversy for almost half a century and debates about their relevance and usefulness in explaining social evolution seem to rekindle at regular intervals. Here, we first provide a concise introduction into the kin selection and multilevel selection theories and shed light onto the roots of the controversy surrounding them. We then review two major aspects of the current debate: the presumed formal equivalency of the two theories and the question whether group selection can lead to group adaptation. We conclude by arguing that the two theories can offer complementary approaches to the study of social evolution: kin selection approaches usually focus on the identification of optimal phenotypes and thus on the endresult of a selection process, whereas multilevel selection approaches focus on the ongoing selection process itself. The two theories thus provide different perspectives that might be fruitfully combined to promote our understanding of the evolution in group-structured populations.

Indexed as

altruismcooperationgroup selectioninclusive fitnesslevels of selectionsociobiology

Identifiers

PMID27158472
PMCPMC4850877

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.