Is thinking of an individual reproducing as "winning" at evolution simplistic?

Factual Questions
1

I’m seriously not sure, which is why I put this in GQ and not GD.

It seems to be a widespread notion of people, especially on the internet, that sowing your seed and propagating the species is “all that matters in the long run”. And that doing so is in a way “winning” at evolution.

This seems overly simplistic to me for several reasons – specifically that evolution is something that takes place at a macro, not micro level. It doesn’t matter if any given individual successfully breeds, what matters is that a large enough percentage of the population breed to ensure genetic diversity over the long term.

This means that, in general, it may be best for individuals not to have offspring because it would strain resources and cause extinction or endangerment. Or it may be advantageous to produce some members that are uninterested in a mate (or even sterile) that contribute to making sure OTHERS mate (by gathering food, hunting, acting as protection, etc) depending on the circumstances. Consider a doctor that personally produces no offspring but cures infertility – they individually didn’t produce any offspring but they directly increased the ability for the species at large to produce offspring in general. This seems to describe bees and ants rather well too, supporting my suspicion.

So am I overthinking things, misinterpreting the rhetoric, or am I right to think that the notion of “spreading your genetics is all that matters in nature” is overly simplistic. Even if my view is true on a general level – does the idea hold for humans, or is the more simplistic statement closer to correct for our species?

2

In terms of pure evolution – real, live, Darwinian selection – then, yeah, not having kids is a “dead end.” It means your genes don’t go forward. It means all your great-nth-grandparents struggled with poverty and wooden ploughs and smallpox for nothing.

That said – screw it! We’re an intelligent species. We make our own victory conditions. The world is OBVIOUSLY in no shortage of human lives, but the values we hold dearest – peace, freedom, liberty, democracy, beauty, science, knowledge, wisdom – those are terribly endangered. Our duty has transcended mere physical survival. Our duty now is to strive for the survival of those things that make being alive worth a damn.

So, today, with the world as it is, donating a few hours each week as a volunteer for your local public library is probably doing more for the survival of human moral and ethical values than having a baby would be!

3

But I’m really curious how you explain, say, ants then. The vast majority of ants aren’t going to spread their genes, but without those sterile members of the species they’d hit a dead end pretty quickly.

4

Individual ants, bees, termites, etc. can be regarded as analogous to cells in a much larger “organism” which is the hive / colony.

5

There’s also “kin selection” in mammals. If I take efforts to provide for my sister’s kids, that means that some of “my” genes will continue to exist and perhaps reproduce. By leaving them a lot of money in my will (ha, ha, I wish!) I’m doing the right thing for “my genes.”

It doesn’t benefit me as an individual… But, then, having kids doesn’t benefit me a whole lot as an individual…

(Hey, a friend’s kid just helped arrange for her to get a job…and other kids sometimes let gram’paw sleep in the basement, so…y’know…)

6

Jragon, from your posts #1 (the OP) and #3, it sounds like you want to discuss an original idea that just occurred to you – the idea that evolutionary success might be something beyond simple individual reproductive success. (All those dead-end ants out there . . .)

Actually, the idea is fairly well established in evolutionary theory. E. O. Wilson discussed example patterns extensively in his massive book Sociobiology, with examples from many various species.
Wiki page on sociobiology: Sociobiology - Wikipedia
Amazon link for the book: Amazon.com

Wilson is an entomologist, so a lot of his examples focus on bug behavior.

One of the basic ideas is kin selection.
Standard thinking, of course, is that any genetic mutation that somehow leads its host to be reproductively successful will lead to that gene being propagated. But by extension, kin selection suggests that a gene might lead its host to be less fit (or fail to be more fit), yet somehow allow other individuals who carry the same gene, collectively, to be more successful.

This suggests a motive for altruism for example: If an individual has a genetically wired-in urge to be helpful to others (which will typically mean, helpful to others that the host perceives as being “family”), then that will help relatives (who will tend to have the same gene) be successful.

Another example suggests why a species evolves to have a long lifetime, far exceeding any individual’s reproductive years. Elderly individuals consume resources in competition with younger specimens yet contribute nothing to species survival. How did this evolve?

Because older individuals do too contribute to the survival of the species. Especially in species that have elaborate communication. Older members become repositories of knowledge and wisdom, which they pass on to the young. Thus, they contribute to the collective successive of the family or the species.

ETA: Aha! I see that Trinopus has ninja’d me on the kin selection theme, even as I typed the above!

7

No, I was more asking what the established literature was and if the popular view was just overly simplistic compared to the contemporary scientifically accepted story. I highly doubted I was anywhere near the first person to have that thought.

Thanks for the informative and thorough post.

8

The idea is also known as inclusive fitness: that an individual’s overall evolutionary success is determined not only by the offspring it produces itself, but by those also produced by its close relatives that share its genes. To quote J.B.S. Haldane, “I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins” (who each respectively share 1/2 or 1/8 of your genes).

9

I think the view you describe in the OP is both correct and overly simplistic. Reproduction is absolutely the fundamental driving force behind evolution. But nothing in biology is simple. Any generalization you can make will break down if you look hard enough. There are exceptions to every rule. People in the field are well aware of the exceptions and are studying them, which seems to be what you’re asking. But just like you don’t need to understand relativity to, say, drive a car, I think most of us biologists are just happy if people understand evolution to that extent, without worrying about complicating the picture.

10

As a general rule, biology is incredibly complicated, so much so that pretty much everything we say about biology is more simplistic than the real thing.

11

I don’t agree. My understanding is evolution still occurs on the individual level, but individuals have a lot of aspects to them that are important to their survival. We evolve to do whatever works to help us survive generation to generation, there is no foresight to it (I’m sure that is obvious but wanted to say it).

Individuals (on an evolutionary level) don’t care about the species or resource depletion. Evolution isn’t long sighted enough to care about those things, it is a generation to generation thing. The reason there is oxygen in our atmosphere is because single celled organisms used to produce it billions of years ago, until they poisoned themselves by creating too much.

However survival rates can be increased by working together as a group. There have been several jumps in evolutionary history of this happening as groups have a lower metabolic rate, size advantages and a division of labor (and I’m sure other benefits). Metabolisms and replicators combined to form single celled organisms. Single cell organisms combined to form eukaryotes. Eukaryotes combined to form multi-cellular organisms. Multi-cellular organisms combined to form groups of social animals. I don’t know if there is another advance that is possible beyond that. But selection can and does favor the ability to work in a group as well as individual fitness.

I know the majority of bees and ants are sterile. But I think that is an evolutionary branch that you can’t really apply to humans.

But there is a give an take with the group, and we evolve not just as individuals but as groups which compete with each other (less cohesive groups are outcompeted by more cohesive groups). As a result individuals who are more fit as members of a group have a survival advantage.

12

That’s not really true. After all, most of those people typically will have many other descendants besides you. And you comprise, at best, only a subset of the genes of each of those ancestors (some of your ancestors won’t be represented in you at all). Virtually none of the genes you do carry will be unique to you, among the contemporary breeding cohort.

13

Evolutionary success can only be determined in retrospect. For example, you can leave a veritable plethora of offspring, but if none of those reproduce, you’re still an evolutionary dead-end.

At best, one might “win” at natural selection. It takes ongoing generations of such “wins” for a lineage to “win” at evolution. And that only means you’ve “won” up til now.

14

Right. The whole concept of “success” or “winning” or “mattering” or whatever is really problematic in the long term in evolution if you look at it too closely.

15

I think you are getting at the problems of “The tragedy of the commons” and “the Prisoner’s Dilemma”.

If I forgo further reproduction for the good of the group, then it simply allows others to use the resources I and my offspring would have used. Unless we all show the same restraint, the “cheaters” win. Assuming this is an inheritable, genetic trait, you are therefore selecting for “selfish genes” over altruistic ones.

Fortunately, the West has come up with a better motivaor - money. Once offspring start to become a net cost rather than a benefit and once science gives us birth control and so has separated the act of reproduction from actual reproduction, then people are heavily motivated to limit the number of offspring. This was a flaw in our genes that we are motivated to have sex moreso than to be surrounded by a dozen children. It worked fine for evolution until birth control came along.

And Chronos has the best comment about this - biology is a lot more complex than any one simplistic analysis.

16

Ants are quirky. They actually share more genes with their sisters than they would with their own offspring (if they had offspring).

17

Evolution doesn’t care what’s best for you as an individual or even for your species. As several Dopers pointed out in a recent GD thread on Social Darwinism:

18

Consider a spherical human…

As for the OP, you need to take the long view in evolution, because it’s not just your offspring, but their offspring as well. If I’m a horse, and produce a whole bunch of offspring with a donkey, that certainly can’t be considered “winning”. Now, that’s an extreme example, but I think you get the idea. Evolutionary “winning” means your genes are propagated through time.

19

No individual ever propagates all of their own genes. And it’s not hard to imagine scenarios in which a greater proportion of the genes one happens to have are propagated by working for community success, rather than individual fecundity.

Really the “winners” in evolution are not organisms, but the genes themselves. They’re the ones that can live forever; we are just vessels.

20

I read a blog entry once that posited that “winning” wasn’t having children, it was having grandchildren. If you raise up a couple offspring who fail to reproduce, you just wasted a bunch of years and resources on nothing from a genetic standpoint. Which is why your parents are always on you about settling down and having kids :wink:

Edit: I see John Mace said much the same thing which is what I get for not reading to the bottom.