The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition (Oxford Landmark Science) — Genesmanship

1. 1. Hamilton's 1964 papers on kin selection were initially neglected but later recognized, forming a case study in meme propagation.
2. 2. Relatedness in kin selection is measured relative to a baseline shared by all species members, not as absolute percentage of shared genes.
3. 3. Sterile soldier aphids, discovered by Shigeyuki Aoki, provide a clear example of kin selection where altruistic genes are passed on through clone-mates.
4. 4. Kin selection is not a special case of group selection; the confusion between the two persists.
5. 5. Animals do not need to calculate relatedness coefficients for kin selection to work; natural selection shapes behavior without conscious math.
6. 6. Humans and other animals use nonverbal cues, including smell, to recognize relatives, supplementing cultural knowledge.
7. 7. Close incest is potentially catastrophic due to recessive lethal genes, and selection for incest avoidance is strong.
8. 8. Optimal outbreeding balances avoiding incest and too-distant mating; Japanese quail prefer first cousins over siblings or unrelated birds.
9. 9. Cooperation in male lions may have started through kin selection, then allowed reciprocal altruism to evolve once a critical quorum of reciprocators existed.
10. 10. In species with lifetime sperm storage, a mother can be as genetically valuable as an identical twin, favoring sibling care and eusociality.
11. 11. The 'mother's brother effect' — maternal uncles being more altruistic than fathers in societies with high marital infidelity — was already known to anthropologists and has been tested.