Soft Selection, Hard Selection, Kin Selection, and Group Selection

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The models of soft selection, hard selection, kin selection and group selection can be represented as variations of a common general model that expresses the total gene frequency change, itself a convariance, as the sum of 2 covariance components: the covariance within groups between individual relative fitness and individual gene frequency averaged over all groups; and the covariance between group mean relative fitness and group mean gene frequency. The general model is a formal partitioning of covariance that makes no assumptions concerning the distribution of fitnesses among genotypes or the distributions of genotypes within and among groups. The different models of selection change these components of covariance by their assumptions. The general model was used to examine the models of Wilson''s trait-group selection model, the family-structured kin selection models and a group selection model involving 3 levels of biological organization, and to illustrate the approach. The relationship of the hard and soft selection models to Wright''s shifting balance theory of evolution was also discussed.