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>
> > 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) and the
coefficient of relatedness is one. We would predict perfect co-operation
between clones, but we would also predict periodic mutations for
freeloading, which then enjoy greater success.
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 ) 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.
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