In analyzing infanticide from the perspective of
gene thinking
it is 1) not adaptive for
a male lion to invest reproductive effort in an individual with whom he shares no
genes and 2) once the infant is killed it is advantageous for the female to come into
estrous and have more offspring with the new male (this will increase her reproductive
output over leaving with the displaced male, and not benefiting from other advantages
of group living: foraging, avoiding predation on young). Given the situation for both
male and female, the observed behaviors make sense in terms of propagating ones
genes
.
The role of the gene (or gene
s
!) as the unit that is relevant in the evolution play an
important part in two influential books in the mid 1970s Sociobiology by E. O.
Wilson, and The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. To grossly oversimplify one of
their main messages: "an organism is just DNAs way of making more DNA"
If we take the case of bird migration we want to know how
the bird navigates to the
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- Fall '10
- JessicaDigirolamo
- Microbiology, Evolution, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins, genetic basis, estrous, Population genetic approaches
-
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