TomHendricks474{at}cs.com wrote in message
news:...
> I think kin selection has some merit, but for the most part it is
> just a form of symbiosis, and that in human behavior it has the
> least amount of affect:
> 



>From the examples you give, it is clear that the sense in which you
use the term 'symbiosis' is 'mutualism', i.e. +/+ interactions.  Kin
selection is a mechanism explaining why altruism (-/+) can be favoured
by natural selection.  They apply to different phenomena, and are each
subsets of the concept of inclusive fitness.

> Mammals:
> Here is where the case breaks down quickly.
> Males and females of every mammal species have 50% of the same genes in the 
> child.
> Yet in every case it is the female who tends and caters to the child. Kin 
> selection would demand 50/50 care, but it is only "in wolves and
humans, that 
> the male plays an important role in the protection and care of the mother and 
> child."  

This is plain wrong.  But it's a common mistake:  Dawkins, one of the
main proponents of kin selection, has admitted to making this mistake
in the past.  Relatedness of an individual to one's self does not
dictate how much altruism one should donate to that individual. 
Relatedness merely adjusts direct fitness of relativess into the
single currency of the inclusive fitness of the focal actor.  Anyway,
we don't have to go into kin selection theory here as offspring are
the direct fitness of individuals; promoting offspring survival is
simply promoting own direct fitness.  If the maternal/paternal care
asymmetry is bewildering from the viewpoint of kin selection, it is
even more bewildering from the viewpoint of standard Darwinism: why
does the male not care about his direct fitness???  The answer is that
the male and the female are both trying to maximize their own direct
fitness, and because of reproductive differences, they may do this in
different ways.  Lets say the female has a maximum of one offspring in
every breeding season.  If she cares for it alone, it has probability
0.5 of survival.  If she and the father lend no care, it has
probability 0.01 of survival.  She has this single offspring to
consider, so unless the care is extremely costly, she should be
expected to look after the child.  Now consider the father: should he
join in with mother in giving parental care, raising the child's
survival from 0.5 to, say, 0.9, or should he go off and mate with more
females to have, on average, N more offspring.   If Nx0.5 > 0.9, then
he should desert.  This is why the female is often left holding the
baby.  Trivers explained all this 30 years ago, and Dawkins updated
the argument in the Selfish Gene (1976).
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