Last month, 30 leading evolutionary biologists met in Amsterdam to discuss a burgeoning controversy. The question of how altruistic behaviour can arise through natural selection, once regarded as ...

Darwin explained how beneficial traits accumulate in natural populations, but how do costly traits evolve? A new study by researchers from Oxford University and the University of Edinburgh explains ...

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 ...

David Sloan Wilson opens his new book, Does Altruism Exist?, with an old conundrum that has animated many late-night dormitory debates: If helping someone gives you pleasure, gains you points for an ...

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 ...

According to Queller, this intragenomic conflict supports the theory of kin selection first proposed by William Hamilton in 1964. Altruism is defined as reducing one's own reproductive output to help ...

One interpretation of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection holds that life is no more than a never-ending battle to survive and reproduce. "Nature, red in tooth and claw," as ...

E.O. Wilson shifts his position on altruism in nature: It is a puzzle of evolution: If natural selection dictates that the fittest survive, why do we see altruism in nature? Why do worker bees or ants ...

It’s a problem that has been debated ever since Darwin: how have hundreds of species of insects and other animals evolved altruistic helpers that give up their own reproduction for the sake of ...

Would you rather give than receive? Do you believe that anyone ever acts with pure, selfless altruism? Do humans always “give” to “get” a little something in return whether it be an actual ...