Guy Hoelzer  wrote in
news:bjm6eh$92q$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

> in article bjjmb1$2jl3$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org, John Edser at
> edser1{at}bigpond.com wrote on 9/8/03 9:52 PM:
> 
>> even Darwin separated sexual selection from natural selection when
>> the process of sexual selection had to be firstly, naturally
>> selected. 
> 
> IMHO, this is an illogical position.  Darwin certainly never wrote
> anything suggesting that this was his view.  The contemporary view is
> that sexual selection is a subcategory of natural selection, not
> distinct from it. There is, in fact, one process of selection in
> evolution in which fitness is determined by the relative survival and
> reproductive successes of heritable forms within populations.  I
> personally favor the paradigm championed by Mary Jane West-Eberhard,
> who coined the term "social selection" to emphasize the specific
> things that can distinguish sexual selection (and selection in some
> other social contexts) from less complex forms of selection.  Her
> point was essentially that coevolutionary systems, in which there is
> evolutionary feedback between interacting populations, tend to evolve
> much faster than systems in which the feedback is absent or
> ineffective.  She also pointed out that such systems tend to "runaway"
> and lose a degree of connection with more static aspects of the
> environment in the process.  All communication systems, including
> sexual signaling systems, have these properties. 

It would seem that social selection may be as common as the "less 
complex" form. I do like the concept, especially as it may emphasize the 
possibilities for  symbiosis. The power of positive sum games has been, 
as I have argued before, largely ignored in much of the scientific 
literature on evolution. With regard to the question of "runaway", this 
will be true of any rapidly changing system. The same could be said in 
reverse of systems where rapid changes in the environment "lose 
connection" with the native species. 

Yours, 

Bill Morse
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