Egalitarian revolution in the Pl...(natural selection landscape. Instead of ...)

Date:10/3/2008

natural selection landscape. Instead of traditional "hostile forces of nature", the competitive interactions among members of the same group became the most dominant evolutionary factor. According to this still controversial view, known as the "social brain" or "Machiavellian intelligence" hypothesis, more intelligent individuals were able to take advantage of other members of their group, achieve higher social status, and leave more offspring who inherited their parent's genes for larger brain size and intelligence. As a result of this runaway process, the average brain size and intelligenc e were increasing across the whole human lineage.

Also increasing were the abilities to keep track of within-group social interactions, to remember friends and their allies and enemies, and to attract and use allies. At some point, physically weaker members of the group started forming successful and stable large coalitions against strong individuals who otherwise would achieve alpha-status and usurp the majority of the crucial resources. Eventually, an egalitarian society was established. Although some of its components are well supported by data, this scenario remains highly controversial. One reason is its complexity which makes it difficult to interpret the data and to intuit the consequences of interactions between multiple evolutionary, ecological, behavioral, and social factors acting simultaneously. It is also tricky to evaluate relevant time-scales and figure out possible evolutionary dynamics.

A paper published in PLoS ONE today makes steps towards answering these challenges. The paper is co-authored by Sergey Gavrilets, a theoretical evolutionary biologist, and two computer scientists, Edgar Duenez-Guzman and Michael Vose, all from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

The researchers built a complex mathematical model describing the process of alliance formation which they then studied using analytical methods and large-scale num
'/>"/>

Contact: Sergey Gavrilets gavrila@tiem.utk.edu Public Library of Science Source:Eurekalert

0 GOOD

Page: 1 2 3 4
Related biology news :

1. Old developmental pathways spawn revolutionary evolutionary changes
2. Systems Biology poised to revolutionize the understanding of cell function and disease
3. Now is Africas turn for a green revolution, global experts say
4. Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa commits 180M to revive farmers depleted soils
5. M2SYS Introduces Revolutionary Biometric Artificial Intelligence Technology to Significantly Reduce Fingerprint Software False Reject Rates
6. Biosensing nanodevice to revolutionize health screenings
7. Revolutionary CO2 maps zoom in on greenhouse gas sources
8. Fluorescent nano-barcodes could revolutionize diagnostics
9. Revolution in rain forest monitoring with MacArthur grant
10. New electrostatic-based DNA microarray technique could revolutionize medical diagnostics
11. Revolutionary chefs? Not likely, shows physics research