Cooperation and Kinship Flashcards

This flashcard set covers the evolutionary processes, definitions, and mathematical rules related to cooperation, altruism, and kinship as taught in BIOL 3340.

Cooperation

An interaction where two or more individuals each receive a net benefit from their joint actions, despite there often being an immediate cost.

Altruism

The unselfish concern for the welfare of others, characterized as care at a cost that immediately reduces an individual's fitness.

Altruism problem

The evolutionary question of why a behavior that immediately reduces an individual's fitness would be selected for by natural selection.

Free-rider problem

The question of why an individual would do reciprocal work for others when they could choose to receive benefits without contributing.

Evolutionary "paths" to cooperation

The three mechanisms that can answer why cooperation evolves: Kinship, Reciprocity, and Group selection.

Identical by descent

Alleles that are shared between individuals specifically because they were inherited from a common ancestor.

Inclusive fitness

The determination of evolutionary success based on both an individual’s own offspring (direct fitness) and the reproduction of related individuals (indirect fitness).

Direct fitness

The number of viable offspring that an organism produces.

Indirect fitness

The incremental effect that an individual’s behavior has on the direct fitness of its genetic relatives.

Coefficient of relatedness ($r$)

A number representing the relatedness between two individuals (A and B), calculated as the probability that a given allele copy in a recent common ancestor has been passed on to both.

Meiotic segregation

The process occurring once per generation that results in a $50\%$ chance that offspring will receive a specific allele, leading to a general rule of $0.5$ relatedness between parents and offspring.

Hamilton’s rule

The principle stating that an allele for helping a relative increases in frequency whenever rb - c > 0, where $r$ is the coefficient of relatedness, $b$ is the benefit, and $c$ is the cost.