The dominant evolutionary theory for Earth's most successful creatures, and a proposed influence on human altruism, is under attack. For decades, selflessness -- as exhibited in eusocial insect ...

Researchers have used several different ways of testing Hamilton's rule, the core mathematical formula of kin selection, as an explanation for the evolution of much altruistic behavior in animals.

It's easy to understand why natural selection favors people who help close kin at their own expense: It can increase the odds the family's genes are passed to future generations. But why assist ...

Understanding the maintenance of cooperation is of fundamental importance in evolutionary biology. Kin selection is a powerful mechanism that explains altruism (Hamilton, 1964), the principle being ...

Social interactions between conspecific parasites are partly dependent on the relatedness of interacting parasites (kin selection), which, in turn, is predicted to affect the extent of damage they ...

A furor has broken out among biologists over ant specialist E.O. Wilson’s latest attack on a concept used to explain the origins of self-sacrifice in the dog-eat-dog world of evolution. The debate ...

I promised I'd go over the recent PNAS paper, Group selection and kin selection: Two concepts but one process. This is one of those articles where most of the heavy lifting is in the technical ...

Natural selection favors people who help close kin at their own expense: It can increase the odds the family’s genes are passed to future generations. But why assist distant relatives? Mathematical ...

In an article to be published in the January issue of BioScience, two philosophers tackle one of the most divisive arguments in modern biology: the value of the theory of "kin selection." Kin ...