"Malcolm"  wrote in message
news:...
> "Name And Address Supplied"
> >
> > > The point is that every new allele starts off as just such a rare
> > > mutation, so we use the more restricted definition of
"related"
> > > when calculating whether altruism is adaptive.
> >
> > I don't see your point. The implication seems to be that the
> > relatedness appropriate to Hamilton's rule will increase as the
> > allele becomes more frequent. That's clearly not the case.
> > Hamilton's rule makes no assumption about allele frequencies,
> > except for pq>0.
> >
> Hamilton's rule refers to the behaviour of the whole organism, and we assume
> a large number of genes, and a large number of alleles not shared by sexual
> partners.
> In a clonal species, pq is zero (there are no alternative alleles) 

This is only true when every individual is genetically identical. That
doesn't seem very realistic, or relevant.

> and the
> coefficient of relatedness is one. 

The coefficient of relatedness is actually undefined in this context.

> We would predict perfect co-operation
> between clones, but we would also predict periodic mutations for
> freeloading, which then enjoy greater success.

And because the free-loaders have higher success, the cooperators are
out-competed, so we wouldn't expect cooperation at all!

> So the stable situation is to treat only identifiable relatives as perfect
> relations, to whom one shows absolute altruism.
> >
> > Also, as has been discussed extensively in sbe, relatedness in
> > Hamilton's rule is not a probability of identity by descent measure.
> > Hamilton's 'green beard' example makes this quite clear.
> >
> The "green beard" effect ( a gene has two effects, to cause
a man to grow a
> green eard and to be nice to other men with green beards ) 

Actually, the greenbeard is much more general than that, in Hamilton's
discussion in 1964. Note that Dawkins coined the term 'green beard'
later, and the name has stuck.

>is an example
> where the rule breaks down, because we are no longer using the coefficient
> of relatedness to determine whether a person shares our genes, but another
> identifier.

I believe you are confusing the coefficient of relatedness with a
measure of genealogical relationship. In some circumstances it will
not matter to do so, but as far back as 1963 Hamilton (and others)
were aware that this is not what r in Hamilton's rule actually is.
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