The Institute Colloquium: Life-time commitment and the evolution of altruism and mutu
Date:
Monday, January 23, 2012 16:30 - 17:30
Speaker:
Jacobus J. Boomsma (University of Copenhagen)
Location:
Raiffeisen Lecture Hall, Central Building
Series:
Institute colloquium
Contact:
Hetzenauer Irene
Major transitions in evolution shift selection to a higher level. Some require high relatedness (multicellularity, eusociality) and some do not (obligate mutualisms, sexual partnership). I will argue that strict, life-time commitment between partners (gametes, parents, somatic cells, and families) appears to be a very general requirement for realizing major transitions. It captures high offspring relatedness following sexual partner choice and it produces analogous alignments of reproductive interests when mutualistic partner choice is “supra-sexual”. Life-time commitment is very difficult to achieve in nature, but all eukaryote life is somehow based on it. As it seems, life-time commitment does not remove all reproductive conflict, but enough of it to allow lineages to diversity and become ecologically successful. Fungus-farming ants and termites have proven to be good models for studying questions of partner commitment and will continue to offer rich opportunities now that sequenced genomes are becoming available.