"Tim Tyler"  wrote in message
news:casn8v$3n0$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> Perplexed in Peoria  wrote or quoted:
>
> > Or, if like McGinn, you have an intuition that geneological
> > history cannot be causal in this situation, ignore the IBD
> > above.  "r" is simply a measure of how much more likely than
> > "p" it is that the two genes are identical for whatever
> > reason.  The key thing is that the formula (r + (1-r)p)
> > gives the probability that the alleles are "shared".
> >
> > Why is that particular formula so important?  Well, when you
> > do the math, you will see that the average fitness of allele
> > carriers will be greater than non-carriers, as long as the
> > carriers direct their altruism to recipients of relatedness
> > "r".  That is, average fitness of carriers will be higher as
> > long as rb>c.  And the parameter "p" nicely cancels out of
> > the equations.  Hamilton's rule is independent of p.  As
> > long as "r" has the meaning above.
>
> ...and as long as the costs associated with recognising
> relatives do not depend on "genetic" factors such as seeing
> if they look like you, or smell like you
>
> ...and as long as high-level selection is not a factor
> (which becomes increasingly unlikely as p approaches 1).
>
> If either of these other conditions is violated, the independence
> from p no longer holds.

You will have to expand on why you think these are exceptions.
In the first case, I don't see how "p" - the frequency of the
altruistic gene - is involved at all.  It is the frequency of
other genes that produce the (expensive?) machinery of kin
recognition.  In the second case, I don't see how the existence
of other kinds of selection besides kin selection changes any
conclusions about the kin selection component of the total
selection package.  That component of the package can remain
independent of "p" even if other components depend on "p".
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