The active germ-line replicator as the unit of selection. Sober and Wilson argued for reintroducing the notion of group selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. The trait is the phenotype, based more or less directly upon specifiable genes.
Functional communication is a phenotype, based upon communicative genes.
In any system of interacting elements, communication involves both individual elements and the unique relationship between those elements relative to other elements. Individual sending and receiving, and unique relationship effects, can be measured via a round-robin design. Communicating genes are not necessarily within the same cell, or even the same organism. Communicating genes in different organisms underlie specific attachment relationships that can involve true altruism. These communicative relationships are, in fact, replicators in Dawkins s sense.