Genetic versus phenotypic models of selection: can genetics be neglected in a long-term perspective?

Weissing, Franz J.

doi:10.1007/bf02409749

Cited by 83 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…But there is fundamental theory being done, establishing formally the validity and exact nature of the analogy, which clari¢es and extends Darwin's insight, the signi¢cance of which as a body of work has not been recognized. There is recent general work for inclusive ¢tness (Taylor 1990(Taylor , 1996 extending the earlier results of Hamilton (1964Hamilton ( , 1970, for ESSs (Hammerstein 1996;Weissing 1996), for age-structured models (Charlesworth 1994) and for frequency-dependent life histories (McNamara 1991(McNamara , 1993(McNamara , 1997. The IMA analogy sometimes has to be derived from population genetics for individual models where its existence or nature is likely to be controversial (Grafen 1990(Grafen , 1998.…”

Section: The Ima Analogy In Stochastic Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Formal Darwinism, the individual–as–maximizing–agent analogy and bet–hedging

Grafen¹

1999

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B

163

116

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The central argument of The origin of species was that mechanical processes (inheritance of features and the di¡erential reproduction they cause) can give rise to the appearance of design. The`mechanical processes' are now mathematically represented by the dynamic systems of population genetics, and the appearance of design by optimization and game theory in which the individual plays the part of the maximizing agent. Establishing a precise individual-as-maximizing-agent (IMA) analogy for a population genetics system justi¢es optimization approaches, and so provides a modern formal representation of the core of Darwinism. It is a hitherto unnoticed implication of recent population-genetics models that, contrary to a decades-long consensus, an IMA analogy can be found in models with stochastic environments (subject to a convexity assumption), in which individuals maximize expected reproductive value. The key is that the total reproductive value of a species must be considered as constant, so therefore reproductive value should always be calculated in relative terms. This result removes a major obstacle from the theoretical challenge to ¢nd a unifying framework which establishes the IMA analogy for all of Darwinian biology, including as special cases inclusive ¢tness, evolutionarily stable strategies, evolutionary life-history theory, age-structured models and sex ratio theory. This would provide a formal, mathematical justi¢cation of fruitful and widespread but`intentional' terms in evolutionary biology, such as`sel¢sh',`altruism' and con£ict'.

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Section: The Ima Analogy In Stochastic Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Formal Darwinism, the individual–as–maximizing–agent analogy and bet–hedging

Grafen¹

1999

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B

163

116

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“…In trying to understand animal behaviour, a reasonable initial approach is to see whether observed behaviour can be explained as a stable endpoint. The advantage of considering stable endpoints rather than the whole evolutionary trajectory is that these endpoints can usually be understood in phenotypic terms [56,57]. A phenotypic characterization of an endpoint is based on suitably defined costs and benefits.…”

Section: Behavioural Interactions Between Parentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflict between parents over care

Houston

Székely

McNamara

2005

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

349

316

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Conflict between parents over care of young arises when the young benefit from the effort of both parents, but each parent suffers a reduction in future reproductive success as a consequence of its own effort. Here, we review existing models and argue that they fail to capture many important components of parental conflict. For example, we lack adequate models of how a parent should compensate for a reduction in the effort of its mate. These models should incorporate the process by which decisions are reached. Recent theory suggests that a parent benefits by handicapping itself, and more experimental and theoretical work on this topic could be fruitful. We also need more theoretical work on attractiveness that incorporates consistent interactions between males and females.There are many forms of parental care and many ways in which care can be costly to a parent, in that it reduces their reproductive success in other breeding attempts [1,2]. Parental care involves a high level of energy expenditure, which might reduce the condition of the parent at the end of the breeding season. This can reduce the future survival of the care-provider and, hence, its probability of breeding the following year. A parent that deserts its mate and young has greater opportunities to pair with a new partner within the current breeding season than does a parent that cares. Even if a male remains with his mate and young, it might be possible to increase his chances of copulating with females other than his mate by decreasing his level of care and devoting more time to courting other females [3]. Such matings are known as extra-pair copulations (EPCs).Although the details vary across species, the success of the young generally depends on the care from both parents, whereas the cost to a parent depends on its own effort. Thus, a conflict of interest emerges [4,5], with each parent preferring the other to do the hard work. Here, we focus on sexual conflict over care, although the parents might also disagree about family size, timing of breeding or the sex ratio of their offspring [6]. For a broader account of sexual conflict, see [7].The benefit that results from a particular level of care by a parent depends on the behaviour of its partner, whereas the cost of care in terms of lost mating opportunities depends on the behaviour of other members of the population. For example, if a male deserts, his chances of obtaining a new mate will depend on the number of females that have also deserted their mate and are hence available. If a male seeks EPCs, then his chances of obtaining them depend on the receptiveness of females in the population and the extent to which males allocate their time to guarding their mates from other males as opposed to caring for their young or seeking EPCs [8]. These complex interactions make it difficult to use verbal arguments to predict the level of care that will evolve. Theory attempts to predict the outcome of evolution by constructing mathematical models that expose the logic of parental conflict. Here, we co...

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“…The games differ in their assumption on whether defect (IPD) or cooperate (ISD) yields a higher pay-off against a defector. Following the traditions of evolutionary game theory ( [28,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45], but see [46]), studies of the evolution of strategies in these games have overwhelmingly assumed a one-to-one relationship between genotypes and strategies. Here, we contrast such a one-to-one implementation with a different implementation where selection does not directly act on strategies, but on the architecture (a simple neural network) underlying these strategies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation

Berg¹,

Weissing²

2015

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Studies aimed at explaining the evolution of phenotypic traits have often solely focused on fitness considerations, ignoring underlying mechanisms. In recent years, there has been an increasing call for integrating mechanistic perspectives in evolutionary considerations, but it is not clear whether and how mechanisms affect the course and outcome of evolution. To study this, we compare four mechanistic implementations of two well-studied models for the evolution of cooperation, the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) game and the Iterated Snowdrift (ISD) game. Behavioural strategies are either implemented by a 1 : 1 genotype-phenotype mapping or by a simple neural network. Moreover, we consider two different scenarios for the effect of mutations. The same set of strategies is feasible in all four implementations, but the probability that a given strategy arises owing to mutation is largely dependent on the behavioural and genetic architecture. Our individual-based simulations show that this has major implications for the evolutionary outcome. In the ISD, different evolutionarily stable strategies are predominant in the four implementations, while in the IPD each implementation creates a characteristic dynamical pattern. As a consequence, the evolved average level of cooperation is also strongly dependent on the underlying mechanism. We argue that our findings are of general relevance for the evolution of social behaviour, pleading for the integration of a mechanistic perspective in models of social evolution.

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Genetic versus phenotypic models of selection: can genetics be neglected in a long-term perspective?

Cited by 83 publications

References 25 publications

Formal Darwinism, the individual–as–maximizing–agent analogy and bet–hedging

Formal Darwinism, the individual–as–maximizing–agent analogy and bet–hedging

Conflict between parents over care

The importance of mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation

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