Beyond shared fate: Group-selected mechanisms for cooperation and competition in fuzzy, fluid vehicles

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Abstract
This commentary makes two points about group selection. First, selection can certainly act on vehicles of various kinds, but applying this idea to human groups is tricky, because a human group is such a fluid, fuzzy sort of vehicle. Nevertheless, even without shared fate, human groups can use ''resource levellers'' and ''resource lotteries'' to foster cooperation. Second, vehicles can exploit internal competition as well as internal cooperation to promote their efficient survival and reproduction, so adaptations for meritocratic sexual competition within human groups, as well as adaptations for egalitarian cooperation, may have been favored by group selection.

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