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Category Archives: societal structure
Societal constructs, and Genetic diversity
While we grapple with numerous discoveries of variation in genomic diversity in humans, interest has subsequently risen in understanding their causes/results. Two recent papers describe experiments to determine (a) the effects of marital rules (who gets to marry whom) on … Continue reading
Quantifying risks of consanguineous mating in humans
The efficacy of selection in purging a deleterious mutation from a randomly mating population depends on numerous factors, including dominance effects of alleles – see my previous posts. Simplistically, most new mutations are expected to be heterozygotic, and be purged … Continue reading
Live fast and reproduce young
Here is one for the “simple, elegant science” folder: a new paper in PNAS by Julia Schroeder and colleagues that demonstrates a fitness disadvantage in offspring from older parents. While there a multitude of papers out there showing that gametes have … Continue reading
How (not) to review papers on inclusive fitness
There are few evolutionary concepts as polarizing as Hamilton’s rule. Some researchers feel that there is no mathematical grounding for it, while others beg to differ. Yet empirical evidence in support of Hamilton’s rule is scarce (but check out this … Continue reading
Posted in adaptation, population genetics, societal structure, theory
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The genetics of another multi-level society
Long-time readers (i.e., “for more than one week”) of The Molecular Ecologist will notice that this is the 2nd post on the socio-genetics of a primate multi-level society. The first being Melissa’s post last week that covered my recent paper … Continue reading
All in the family: hierarchical social and genetic structure in the Old World monkey Theropithecus gelada
Complex, multi-level animal societies have evolved convergently across many taxa but we know little about the mechanisms behind their formation and their associated fitness benefits. In their Molecular Ecology paper published online last week, Snyder-Mackler et al. addressed these questions … Continue reading