Altruism researchers must cooperate

摘要

Last month, 30 leading evolutionary biologists met in Amsterdam to discuss a burgeoning controversy. The question of how altruistic behaviour can arise through natural selection, once regarded as settled, is again the subject of heated debate.rnThe question dividing biologists is the degree to which inclusive fitness theory, or kin selection, explains the evolution of altruism - in which an animal provides a benefit to another at a cost to itself. This theory, that natural selection can sometimes favour animals that behave altruistically towards relatives, has dominated empirical work on social behaviour since it was devised by W. D.