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Triggering Kin Selection

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science
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Synonyms

Inclusive fitness; Social evolution

Definition

The mechanisms that promote kin selection, which is the process whereby traits and behaviors evolve because of their impact on the reproductive success of their bearer’s close relatives.

Introduction

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection set the stage for explaining the appearance of organismal design in the natural world (Darwin 1859), a problem that was famously outlined by William Paley in his book Natural Theology: if a watch requires a watchmaker, then organismal design requires a designer, to put it simply. In his influential book On The Origin of Species, Darwin argued that organismal design is the product of a process he called natural selection, a process that occurs whenever populations show variation among individuals, when this variation is associated with reproductive success and is at least partially inherited from parents to offspring (Darwin 1859). Characters that confer a survival or...

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Correspondence to António M. M. Rodrigues .

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Rodrigues, A.M.M. (2016). Triggering Kin Selection. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3089-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3089-1

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