3 results on '"Xiaoyun Liao"'
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2. Relatedness, conflict, and the evolution of eusociality.
- Author
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Xiaoyun Liao, Stephen Rong, and David C Queller
- Subjects
Biology (General) ,QH301-705.5 - Abstract
The evolution of sterile worker castes in eusocial insects was a major problem in evolutionary theory until Hamilton developed a method called inclusive fitness. He used it to show that sterile castes could evolve via kin selection, in which a gene for altruistic sterility is favored when the altruism sufficiently benefits relatives carrying the gene. Inclusive fitness theory is well supported empirically and has been applied to many other areas, but a recent paper argued that the general method of inclusive fitness was wrong and advocated an alternative population genetic method. The claim of these authors was bolstered by a new model of the evolution of eusociality with novel conclusions that appeared to overturn some major results from inclusive fitness. Here we report an expanded examination of this kind of model for the evolution of eusociality and show that all three of its apparently novel conclusions are essentially false. Contrary to their claims, genetic relatedness is important and causal, workers are agents that can evolve to be in conflict with the queen, and eusociality is not so difficult to evolve. The misleading conclusions all resulted not from incorrect math but from overgeneralizing from narrow assumptions or parameter values. For example, all of their models implicitly assumed high relatedness, but modifying the model to allow lower relatedness shows that relatedness is essential and causal in the evolution of eusociality. Their modeling strategy, properly applied, actually confirms major insights of inclusive fitness studies of kin selection. This broad agreement of different models shows that social evolution theory, rather than being in turmoil, is supported by multiple theoretical approaches. It also suggests that extensive prior work using inclusive fitness, from microbial interactions to human evolution, should be considered robust unless shown otherwise.
- Published
- 2015
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3. Some Agreement on Kin Selection and Eusociality?
- Author
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Xiaoyun Liao, Stephen Rong, and David C. Queller
- Subjects
0106 biological sciences ,0303 health sciences ,Mathematical and theoretical biology ,Evolution of eusociality ,General Immunology and Microbiology ,QH301-705.5 ,General Neuroscience ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Inclusive fitness ,Kin selection ,Biology ,010603 evolutionary biology ,01 natural sciences ,Eusociality ,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology ,Epistemology ,03 medical and health sciences ,Evolutionary biology ,Biology (General) ,General Agricultural and Biological Sciences ,Equivalence (measure theory) ,030304 developmental biology ,Skepticism ,media_common - Abstract
Our paper [1] was not about the exact mathematical equivalence of inclusive fitness and other approaches. Theoreticians will continue to debate this question, but the rest of us want to know whether it matters for biology. We asked whether the model of Nowak, Tarnita, and Wilson (NTW)[2], when applied to their chosen test case of eusociality, makes any important difference. Does it refute kin selection theory? Does it offer new insights? The answer to both questions is no. Now Nowak and Allen [3] suggest that we have misinterpreted NTW. For example, NTW did not mean that relatedness is unimportant. Instead, they only meant that if relatedness is high and held constant, other factors determine which species evolve eusociality, and that this is an issue the kin selectionists have not considered. On the contrary, it is completely obvious from Hamilton’s rule; if you hold relatedness constant, differences will be determined by variation in costs and benefits. There have also been more specific studies about synergistic factors affecting these costs and benefits [4,5]. Moreover, if this is the basis for NTW’s claim that relatedness is not causal, then we have shown that NTW’s other parameters are also not causal, because when we force them to be constant, only variation in relatedness matters [1]. Finally, this apparent concession about the importance of relatedness is perplexing, given that Nowak and Allen expend significant effort questioning the details of exactly how we modeled lower relatedness, while continuing to equivocate about the real issue of how relatedness matters. Low relatedness groups are real and can be formed in many ways, but with offspring control they do not give rise to eusociality [6]. If Nowak and Allen think otherwise and believe that there are reasonable ways to lower relatedness so that it does not make eusociality harder to evolve, then they should show how. We could direct similar skepticism at Nowak and Allen’s [3] interpretations of the other two NTW claims that we investigated. But let us accept at face value all three of their interpretations about what NTW meant. If NTW did not actually mean that relatedness is unimportant, and if they did not mean that workers are merely robotic extra-somatic projections of the queen’s genome, and if they did not mean that eusociality was as hard to evolve as suggested in their main examples, then we are in happy agreement! But if this is so, why do they not just explicitly say, for example, “our method agrees with inclusive fitness in showing that higher relatedness is crucial in the evolution of eusociality”? Perhaps because it would require admitting that what we have learned about eusociality from kin selection models still stands, and that the NTW models, despite their much greater complexity, have so far added little more.
- Published
- 2015
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