Talk:Inclusive fitness

message: The explanations for other principles seem a little vague and don't contribute much to understanding them. As well as the definition for kin selection is not what I have read in other work. Some statements/ explanations are not cited and if they are, it is not known with ease or by standard means. 
----McGheess.83----  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcgheess.83 (talk • contribs) 23:58, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

message: It seems decently informative and it's arguably appropriate to the article, but if no one finds any sources, a lot of the claims will have to be trimmed down soon. --DoItAgain (talk) 13:21, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need references for the last section 

message: I've cleaned up some of the text, and cut the section on parental care as altruism. Altruistic behaviours are those that have a negative impact on the personal fitness of the actor, i.e. reduce the number of direct descendants, whilst improving the reproductive success of non-descendant relatives.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.79.29.250 (talk) 10:04, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure I agree its not altruistic - however I do agree that it does not demonstrate inclusive fitness (at all or well). So i've removed the lapwing example as well. The squirrel example is good though. Fresheneesz (talk) 02:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Parental care is not altruistic 

message: There is no result for Ricklefs & Miller 2001 on Google Scholar. 216.73.248.51 (talk) 20:13, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Plus their definition is godawful. 98.234.216.78 (talk) 01:38, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ricklefs and Miller, 2001? 

message: Strictly speaking, Hamilton's Equation is an  inequality, not an  equation.  It is usually referred to as  Hamilton's Rule, or as the Hamilton Inequality.  It might be advisable to rename that section appropriately, not least to avoid confusion with Hamilton's Equations, which actually are equations.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.132.94.13 (talk) 15:58, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hamilton's Equation or Hamilton's Inequality? 

message: In a phone conversation with Mike Orlove, he identifies problems following reference links using NetEcho and NetByPhone, which provide web browsing for the visually disabled over the phone.  There are two styles of references that are used in this article: the standard wiki  doesn't correctly bring you to the reference, but instead takes you to the beginning of the current article.  Mike proposes using the older system of simple text to make this accessible to disabled people.  It would be a good thing in any event to be consistent in the reference styles.  Does anybody else have problems following references with a different browser?  Safari seems to work properly.
Mhuben (talk) 13:40, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: An issue like this should be raised at WP:VPT where a bunch of highly experienced techos are likely to provide useful feedback. Please make your report precise with an example: At this section, clicking the [10] in the last paragraph should jump to "Maynard Smith, 1995". However, using ...[what exactly?]... it jumps to the top of the article. Specify whether this happens for all references in all articles (i.e. click a few refs in a few articles: does it ever work?). If WP:VPT does not help, ask User:Graham87. Johnuniq (talk) 02:21, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

text: If r is defined such that Hamilton's Rule is preservedOrlove, M. J. 1975 A Model of Kin Selection not Invoking Coefficients of Relationship J. Theor. Biol. v49 pp289-310Orlove, M. J. & Wood, C. L. 1978.  "Coefficients of relationship and coefficients of relatedness in kin selection: A covariance form for the RHO formula".  Journal of Theoretical Biology, Volume 73, Issue 4, 21 August 1978, Pages 679-686Michod, R. E. & Hamilton, W. D. 1980.  "Coefficients of relatedness in sociobiology"  Nature 288, 694 - 697 (18 December 1980) then the approach is by definition ad hoc.  However, if r is defined in addition such that two propositions about the rate of selection, namely "the total amount of corrected inclusive fitness in the world equals the total amount of personal fitness in the world" and "if everyone has a doppelganger on a possible world and the personal fitness of one's doppelganger equals one's own corrected inclusive fitness (provided that the initial conditions are the same in both worlds) then the plot of gene frequency as a function of time will be identical in both worlds", are preserved then  the two definitions of r coincide,  which greatly reduces or eliminates the ad hoc nature of Hamilton's RuleOrlove, M. J. 1979 A Reconciliation of Inclusive Fitness and Personal Fitness Approaches: a Proposed Correcting Term for the Inclusive Fitness Formula, J. Theor. Biol. v81 pp577-586: where corrected inclusive fitness equals inclusive fitness in the original sense, plus C, where C is a constant the same for everyone in the population at any instant in time and it equals the total number of stranger equivalents reared in the current generation divided by the population size (e.g., if r equals 1/8 between cousins and I rear 8 offspring from my cousin.  I have reared one of my offspring  equivalents and 7 stranger equivalents. Evenly dividing the stranger equivalents between all members of the population is a little white lie equivalent to saying I reared one of my offspring and seven strangers. However, it does preserve the proposition about rates of selection.  Hamilton's 1964 not using C was not an oversight because he wanted his definition of fitness to be incapable of decreasing as time goes by, as R. A. Fisher predicted for Classical fitness in his fundamental theorem of natural selection.  It is not only interesting that the two derivations for r yield the same formula, but even more interesting that the term to the right of the minus sign in the covariance formulae in these formulae for r derive from the genotypes of offspring that the potential beneficiary has anyway, regardless whether she is helped or not in the Hamilton's-rule-related derivation, but from the parts of the genotypes of the extra offspring that the potential beneficiary has when she is helped that are unrelated to the altruist in the rates-of-selection derivation.Orlove, M. J. 1979 A Reconciliation of Inclusive Fitness and Personal  Fitness Approaches: a Proposed Correcting Term for the Inclusive Fitness  Formula, J. Theor. Biol. v81 pp577-586  Nowak et al. cite the fact that both inclusive fitness and personal fitness can be used "to do the same thing" as evidence for the superfluous nature of inclusive fitness.  However, Orlove 1979 and Orlove 1975 use it as a way of finding philosophical implications, notably seeing inclusive fitness theory as isomorphic with the much older karma theory, C being equivalent to group karma.  The similarity between kin theory and karma theory stems from the natural selection working on correlated events just as well as when they are or are not causally linked, much as in B. S. Skinner finding a similar phenomenon in operant conditioning which he called "superstition".Skinner, B. F. "'Superstition' in the Pigeon," Journal of Experimental Psychology #38, 1947. 
A recent paper by Alan Grafen is a much more up to date statement of the inclusive fitness view (which cite's Orlove's seminal 1975 paper).
NBeale (talk) 07:17, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

text: I'm sorry but this really won't do. (a) The restored version has some basic errors (eg the ref on squrrels, and Garnder has not submitted a paper to Nature in response to the article, it is a letter co-signed with many others that will eventually appear with the authors' response in the correspondence section, but (b) what Mike has done is inserted a long essay citing mainly his 1979 paper which has been cited just five times since publication (and partly on his 1975 paper which has been cited 54 times in the subsequent 35 years, only 2 of which are this century. Thus the article becomes Orlove's view of inclusive fitness and without intending disrespect to a pioneer from the 1970s this is giving far too much weight to a researcher who seems to have published 4 papers between 1975 and 1982 and nothing since.  If Mike wants to publish a paper correcting Nowak and Wilson he should submit it to a peer-reviewed journal and not do it in a Wikipedia article. (c) I think there are technical errors in his comments, and certainly infelicities of style, but I really don't have time to go through it. NBeale (talk) 11:18, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  The work on squirrels and on Gardner are not the work of Orlove, but another contributor.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mhuben (talk • contribs) 15:25, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orlove comments 

message: I deleted two rather large contributions from Mike Orlove (one of them quoted below) which heavily cite his own work between 1975 and 1980.  I honestly think these give undue weight to some very old material, and to one particular PoV amongst many.  But others may consider that some or all of this is worth preserving:  
:If r is defined such that Hamilton's Rule is preservedOrlove, M. J. 1975 A Model of Kin Selection not Invoking Coefficients of Relationship J. Theor. Biol. v49 pp289-310Orlove, M. J. & Wood, C. L. 1978.  "Coefficients of relationship and coefficients of relatedness in kin selection: A covariance form for the RHO formula".  Journal of Theoretical Biology, Volume 73, Issue 4, 21 August 1978, Pages 679-686Michod, R. E. & Hamilton, W. D. 1980.  "Coefficients of relatedness in sociobiology"  Nature 288, 694 - 697 (18 December 1980) then the approach is by definition ad hoc.  However, if r is defined in addition such that two propositions about the rate of selection, namely "the total amount of corrected inclusive fitness in the world equals the total amount of personal fitness in the world" and "if everyone has a doppelganger on a possible world and the personal fitness of one's doppelganger equals one's own corrected inclusive fitness (provided that the initial conditions are the same in both worlds) then the plot of gene frequency as a function of time will be identical in both worlds", are preserved then  the two definitions of r coincide,  which greatly reduces or eliminates the ad hoc nature of Hamilton's RuleOrlove, M. J. 1979 A Reconciliation of Inclusive Fitness and Personal Fitness Approaches: a Proposed Correcting Term for the Inclusive Fitness Formula, J. Theor. Biol. v81 pp577-586: where corrected inclusive fitness equals inclusive fitness in the original sense, plus C, where C is a constant the same for everyone in the population at any instant in time and it equals the total number of stranger equivalents reared in the current generation divided by the population size (e.g., if r equals 1/8 between cousins and I rear 8 offspring from my cousin.  I have reared one of my offspring  equivalents and 7 stranger equivalents. Evenly dividing the stranger equivalents between all members of the population is a little white lie equivalent to saying I reared one of my offspring and seven strangers. However, it does preserve the proposition about rates of selection.  Hamilton's 1964 not using C was not an oversight because he wanted his definition of fitness to be incapable of decreasing as time goes by, as R. A. Fisher predicted for Classical fitness in his fundamental theorem of natural selection.  It is not only interesting that the two derivations for r yield the same formula, but even more interesting that the term to the right of the minus sign in the covariance formulae in these formulae for r derive from the genotypes of offspring that the potential beneficiary has anyway, regardless whether she is helped or not in the Hamilton's-rule-related derivation, but from the parts of the genotypes of the extra offspring that the potential beneficiary has when she is helped that are unrelated to the altruist in the rates-of-selection derivation.Orlove, M. J. 1979 A Reconciliation of Inclusive Fitness and Personal  Fitness Approaches: a Proposed Correcting Term for the Inclusive Fitness  Formula, J. Theor. Biol. v81 pp577-586  Nowak et al. cite the fact that both inclusive fitness and personal fitness can be used "to do the same thing" as evidence for the superfluous nature of inclusive fitness.  However, Orlove 1979 and Orlove 1975 use it as a way of finding philosophical implications, notably seeing inclusive fitness theory as isomorphic with the much older karma theory, C being equivalent to group karma.  The similarity between kin theory and karma theory stems from the natural selection working on correlated events just as well as when they are or are not causally linked, much as in B. S. Skinner finding a similar phenomenon in operant conditioning which he called "superstition".Skinner, B. F. "'Superstition' in the Pigeon," Journal of Experimental Psychology #38, 1947. 
A recent paper by Alan Grafen is a much more up to date statement of the inclusive fitness view (which cite's Orlove's seminal 1975 paper).
NBeale (talk) 07:17, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry but this really won't do. (a) The restored version has some basic errors (eg the ref on squrrels, and Garnder has not submitted a paper to Nature in response to the article, it is a letter co-signed with many others that will eventually appear with the authors' response in the correspondence section, but (b) what Mike has done is inserted a long essay citing mainly his 1979 paper which has been cited just five times since publication (and partly on his 1975 paper which has been cited 54 times in the subsequent 35 years, only 2 of which are this century. Thus the article becomes Orlove's view of inclusive fitness and without intending disrespect to a pioneer from the 1970s this is giving far too much weight to a researcher who seems to have published 4 papers between 1975 and 1982 and nothing since.  If Mike wants to publish a paper correcting Nowak and Wilson he should submit it to a peer-reviewed journal and not do it in a Wikipedia article. (c) I think there are technical errors in his comments, and certainly infelicities of style, but I really don't have time to go through it. NBeale (talk) 11:18, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  The work on squirrels and on Gardner are not the work of Orlove, but another contributor.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mhuben (talk • contribs) 15:25, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: More Orlove Comments

message: I should make it clear, for the avoidance of any doubt, that I do not at all object to Mike, or any other expert, making comments, far from it!  But it is generally much better not to over-cite one's own work, and to try to keep things in proportion.  Could Mike, or anyone else, add a short para based at least in part on the more recent papers, such as the one I cite above? NBeale (talk) 11:50, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Of course more focused comments from Mike Orlove would be v helpful

message: The Beldings Ground Squirrel section in the intro looks a bit too good to be true.  The ref turns out to be a PhD student's website and when I replaced it with the paper that seemed most relevant (from the title) and then found the paper it makes no such claim about relatedness.  Can anyone actually substantiate this?NBeale (talk) 18:26, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beldings Ground Squirrel 

message: The most recent edit appears to be somewhat excessive; the text certainly was lengthy, but some of the citations deserve inclusion here. Dyanega (talk)
=== Counting error ===
Nick stated that between 1975 and 1982 Orlove only has four publications. Actually there are 13. With the following exceptions they are all in peer-reviewed journals and all about kin theory. Exceptions: Four are in a popular magazine (Creative Computing); One of these was an article including kin theory simulations. The remaining three were about logic, physics and philosophy on a level for kids. One had a long foreword written by the editor, and one was totally reworked by the editor. 
Of the remaining nine one was a book chapter and another was co-authored with statistician Constance L. Wood.
P.S.--I'm not Mike. Posting this for him due to his handicap.
:I said "seems to have published" and I was going by Google Scholar. I apologise if I have under-counted. The point remains though that there are c41k articles on Kin Selection and 6k on inclusive fitness. The highest cited articles are cited 323 times. I don't deny that Orlove made a valid and interesting point but we shouldn't give undue weight just one author. NBeale (talk) 21:20, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal appears more wholesale than necessary 

message: Nick stated that between 1975 and 1982 Orlove only has four publications. Actually there are 13. With the following exceptions they are all in peer-reviewed journals and all about kin theory. Exceptions: Four are in a popular magazine (Creative Computing); One of these was an article including kin theory simulations. The remaining three were about logic, physics and philosophy on a level for kids. One had a long foreword written by the editor, and one was totally reworked by the editor. 
Of the remaining nine one was a book chapter and another was co-authored with statistician Constance L. Wood.
P.S.--I'm not Mike. Posting this for him due to his handicap.
:I said "seems to have published" and I was going by Google Scholar. I apologise if I have under-counted. The point remains though that there are c41k articles on Kin Selection and 6k on inclusive fitness. The highest cited articles are cited 323 times. I don't deny that Orlove made a valid and interesting point but we shouldn't give undue weight just one author. NBeale (talk) 21:20, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Counting error 

message: The above is a marker to allow a visually impaired person to post here. It looks stupid, but please do not remove.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.253.187.23 (talk) 20:03, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terminal Bud 

message: Changed the opening to say "Inclusive fitness is..." in the standard style of Wikipedia articles. Strictly speaking, the article is not about "inclusive fitness theory."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.253.187.23 (talk) 16:17, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opening phrase 

message: In resonance with ChrisBateman's comments on 'criticism' and "badge of dishonour" above, and with Jebus989 on background/history, I have added some referenced content to the 'Inclusive fitness and altruism' section that I hope is useful. The aim is to forestall the common misunderstanding/over-simplification that the theory predicts that organisms will cooperate with genetic relatives, one which, though not a pitfall for experts, is a very common one for students and others coming to the theory for the first time. I'd be grateful for any feedback on this, or the inclusion in the article of additional examples or clarifications. Thanks.Maximilianholland (talk) 19:36, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additions to section 'Inclusive fitness and altruism'

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The "Opposing view" section that concludes the article is really litle more than its first paragraph - the second, larger paragraph describing FURTHER SUPPORT for Hamilton et al's theories. Its third and final paragraph is, I find, hard to make anything of.
The section is little more than a miniscule nod and dismissive reference to the paper of Nowak et al., a POSITION, in my opinion, that is diametrically opposed to the assessment given, for instance, by the Encyclopedia Britannica (https://www.britannica.com/science/inclusive-fitness) which concludes: 
  "Although some researchers still contend that inclusive fitness can be used to describe the evolution of eusociality, the theory’s empirical assumptions and relevance to only very specialized social structures have led others to challenge its validity. American biologists Edward O. Wilson, Martin A. Nowak, and Corina E. Tarnita have provided mathematical explanations for eusociality based on population genetics and natural selection .. the researchers determined that competition between selection for a eusocial allele .. was determined by basic principles guiding natural selection rather than by selection factors that extend beyond standard fitness calculations. The researchers further concluded that genetic relatedness is a consequence of cooperation and eusociality, not a driving force behind the evolution of these characteristic."
Can anyone please introduce some balance to the article that reflects the significance of Nowak et al.'s paper?  The stark contrast between Wikipedia's presentation and Britannica's does no favours to anyone. 
The response to Nowak et al., and their reply to this, can be read here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tom-Wenseleers/publication/50832089_Inclusive_fitness_theory_and_eusociality/links/5db31dc34585155e27010b53/Inclusive-fitness-theory-and-eusociality.pdf  
LookingGlass (talk) 15:04, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Um, I'm afraid that it's the EB's unsubstantiated claims that are hopelessly unbalanced: which doesn't mean that the section is much good as it stands (the article isn't C-grade for nothing). It would benefit from a substantial rewriting to make clear the multiple strong and evidence-based rebuttals of the Nowak et al paper, which are admirably presented in the researchgate page. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:17, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opposing view