Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!shelby!agate!bionet!GENETICS.WASHINGTON.EDU!joe
From: joe@GENETICS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Joe Felsenstein)
Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio
Subject: Re: Revisiting Kin Selection
Message-ID: <9010252142.AA06639@evolution.genetics.washington.edu>
Date: 25 Oct 90 21:42:13 GMT
References: <9010251707.AA15795@genbank.bio.net>
Sender: daemon@genbank.bio.net
Lines: 27


Xuhua Xia writes that: 

(statement of Hamilton's principle for kin selection deleted)

> 
> I think this is quite misleading. When an altruistic mutant
> arises in a non-altruistic population, the genetic relatedness
> of this altruistic mutant to its kins has nothing to do with the
> inclusive fitness of this particular altruistic gene because
> this mutated gene is not identical by descent to any other genes
> in the population. So the gene suffers no matter how much
> benefit the altruist can bring to its relatives.

After a few generations of reproduction the probability that the
recipient towards whom the behavior is directed also contains a copy of
that allele is 0.5 for sibs, 0.25 for half-sibs, etc.  So Hamilton's
principle works.  Only in the unlikely case that the allele *always*
causes the behavior and the behavior is *always* lethal is there any
problem of the sort Xia suggests.


-----
Joe Felsenstein, Dept. of Genetics, Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
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