Altruistic behaviour in Dictyostelium discoideum explained on the basis of individual selection

Atzmony, D and Zahavi, A and Nanjundiah, V (1997) Altruistic behaviour in Dictyostelium discoideum explained on the basis of individual selection. In: Current Science, 72 (2). pp. 142-145.

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Abstract

It is often argued that natural selection acting at the level of the individual may not be sufficient to explain the evolution of altruism. We suggest that before accepting such a point of view in any specific instance, the parsimonious course would be to examine all possible ways in which individual-level selection might act and rule out its sufficiency only when the postulated means for its action are either inherently improbable or experimentally disproven. As an illustration we propose an evolutionary model, based on the individual cell as the unit of selection, for the maintenance of 'altruistic' behaviour by pre-stalk cells in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Current Science
Publisher:	Current Science Association
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to Current Science Association
Department/Centre:	Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences
Date Deposited:	24 Feb 2009 06:14
Last Modified:	03 Jan 2013 10:30
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/18276

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