Inclusive fitness
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In evolutionary biology, inclusive fitness is one of two metrics of evolutionary success as defined by W. D. Hamilton in 1964:
- Personal fitness is the number of offspring that an individual begets (regardless of who rescues/rears/supports them)
- Inclusive fitness is the number of offspring equivalents that an individual rears, rescues or otherwise supports through its behaviour (regardless of who begets them)
An individual's own child, who carries one half of the individual's genes, is defined as one offspring equivalent. A sibling's child, who will carry one-quarter of the individual's genes, is 1/2 offspring equivalent. Similarly, a cousin's child, who has 1/16 of the individual's genes, is 1/8 offspring equivalent.
From the gene's point of view, evolutionary success ultimately depends on leaving behind the maximum number of copies of itself in the population. Prior to Hamilton's work, it was generally assumed that genes only achieved this through the number of viable offspring produced by the individual organism they occupied. However, this overlooked a wider consideration of a gene's success, most clearly in the case of the social insects where the vast majority of individuals do not produce offspring.
Overview
Hamilton showed mathematically that, because other members of a population may share one's genes, a gene can also increase its evolutionary success by indirectly promoting the reproduction and survival of other individuals who also carry that gene. This is variously called "kin theory", "kin selection theory" or "inclusive fitness theory". The most obvious category of such individuals is close genetic relatives, and where these are concerned, the application of inclusive fitness theory is often more straightforwardly treated via the narrower kin selection theory.
Hamilton's theory, alongside reciprocal altruism, is considered one of the two primary mechanisms for the evolution of social behaviors in natural species and a major contribution to the field of sociobiology, which holds that some behaviors can be dictated by genes, and therefore can be passed to future generations and may be selected for as the organism evolves.
Although described in seemingly anthropomorphic terms, these ideas apply to all living things, and can describe the evolution of innate and learned behaviors over a wide range of species including insects, small mammals or humans.
Belding's ground squirrel provides an example. The ground squirrel gives an alarm call to warn its local group of the presence of a predator. By emitting the alarm, it gives its own location away, putting itself in more danger. In the process, however, the squirrel may protect its relatives within the local group (along with the rest of the group). Therefore, if the effect of the trait influencing the alarm call typically protects the other squirrels in the immediate area, it will lead to the passing on of more copies of the alarm call trait in the next generation than the squirrel could leave by reproducing on its own. In such a case natural selection will increase the trait that influences giving the alarm call, provided that a sufficient fraction of the shared genes include the gene(s) predisposing to the alarm call.
Synalpheus regalis, a eusocial shrimp, also is an example of an organism whose social traits meet the inclusive fitness criterion. The larger defenders protect the young juveniles in the colony from outsiders. By ensuring the young's survival, the genes will continue to be passed on to future generations.
Inclusive fitness is more generalized than strict kin selection, which requires that the shared genes are identical by descent. Inclusive fitness is not limited to cases where "kin" ('close genetic relatives') are involved.
See also
- Criticism of evolutionary psychology
- Evolutionary psychology
- Gene-centered view of evolution
- Hamiltonian spite
- Kin selection
- Reproductive success
- r/K selection theory
