Why Cooperation is More Evolved

September 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment

In the hey-day of neo-Darwinian admonishments to compete or die the anarchist Peter Kropotkin wrote an intelligent and observationally based rebuttal called Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.  “Sociability” he said “is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.”  111 years later science is showing how important co-operation is in the evolution of species.

panda_cooperation

I’m not sure ‘generous’ is the right word here.  Co-operation seems right to me, however:

“Ever since Darwin,” Plotkin said, “biologists have been puzzled about why there is so much apparent cooperation, and even flat-out generosity and altruism, in nature. The literature on game theory has worked to explain why generosity arises. Our paper provides such an explanation for why we see so much generosity in front of us.”

… “When people act generously they feel it is almost instinctual, and indeed a large literature in evolutionary psychology shows that people derive happiness from being generous,” Plotkin said. “It’s not just in humans. Of course social insects behave this way, but even bacteria and viruses share gene products and behave in ways that can’t be described as anything but generous.”

“We find that in evolution, a population that encourages cooperation does well,” Stewart said. “To maintain cooperation over the long term, it is best to be generous.”

Science Online

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Evolution: Onwards!

July 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Being one of the few people in the US, I believe, who has actually read (and marveled at) Darwin’s Origin of Species, I am always alert to news of evolution in action.  Came one today, from Bangladesh!

People living in the Ganges Delta, where cholera is an ancient, endemic and often lethal disease, have adapted genetically to the scourge through variations in about 300 genes, say researchers who have scanned their genomes for the fingerprints of evolution.

The researchers also found unexpected changes in genes that protect against arsenic, suggesting that arsenic exposure in Bangladesh is not just a modern problem associated with deep tube wells but may have ancient roots.

These instances of natural selection probably took place within the last 5,000 to 30,000 years, the researchers say, and show how evolution has continued to mold human populations through the relatively recent past.

Cholera and Adaptation

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South Korea surrenders to creationist demands

June 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Bad News (To Keep You) Alert, from the journal, Nature

Soo Bin Park

Seoul

Mention creationism, and many scientists think of the United States, where efforts to limit the teaching of evolution have made headway in a couple of states1. But the successes are modest compared with those in South Korea, where the anti-evolution sentiment seems to be winning its battle with mainstream science.

A petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx. The move has alarmed biologists, who say that they were not consulted. “The ministry just sent the petition out to the publishing companies and let them judge,” says Dayk Jang, an evolutionary scientist at Seoul National University.

The campaign was led by the Society for Textbook Revise (STR), which aims to delete the “error” of evolution from textbooks to “correct” students’ views of the world, according to the society’s website

 

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