What is altruism?

Benjamin Kerr, Peter Godfrey-Smith and Marcus W. Feldman

Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10.1016/S0169-5347(03)00318-5

Altruism is generally understood to be behavior that benefits others at a
personal cost to the behaving individual. However, within evolutionary
biology, different authors have interpreted the concept of altruism
differently, leading to dissimilar predictions about the evolution of
altruistic behavior. Generally, different interpretations diverge on which
party receives the benefit from altruism and on how the cost of altruism is
assessed. Using a simple trait-group framework, we delineate the assumptions
underlying different interpretations and show how they relate to one
another. We feel that a thorough examination of the connections between
interpretations not only reveals why different authors have arrived at
disparate conclusions about altruism, but also illuminates the conditions
that are likely to favor the evolution of altruism.

Sometimes, the pervasiveness of a scientific term gives one the impression
that its meaning is unequivocal. Ironically, such ubiquity can go
hand-in-hand with ambiguity, particularly when the term is borrowed from
common parlance and 'lacks the precision, uniformity, and neutrality that
scientific terms are supposed to have' [1]. Naturally, confusion arises when
differences in the meaning of a key term are overlooked, often resulting in
needless dispute and a failure to recognize underlying progress and
consensus.

Within evolutionary biology, the term 'altruism' is an example of such
ambiguity. A common definition describes altruism as behavior that
simultaneously entails fitness costs to the behaving individual and fitness
benefits to individuals on the receiving end of the behavior [2,3] . Several
authors have provided insight into how ambiguity creeps into such a
definition [1,4-7] . Here, we build on this work to delineate the primary
differences among different interpretations of 'altruism' ( Box 1). We then
show how these different interpretations relate to one another. We do not
advocate the use of one particular interpretation. Rather, we examine the
evolutionary processes that are associated with each one.

Complete paper from Elsevier via BioMedNet
http://tinyurl.com/ywrvh
[HTML, >100kb, Math symbols do not display properly]

http://tinyurl.com/347l9
[PDF, 6 Pages, 151kb. Right-click and select 'Save target as']

Comment:
Clarifies the debate.

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek.
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