  The concept of group selection has a chequered and controversial history in evolutionary biology. The founders of modern  neo-Darwinism—R.A. Fisher, J.B.S.  Haldane and S. Wright—were all aware that group selection could in principle permit altruistic behaviours to evolve, but they doubted the importance of this evolutionary mechanism.  Nonetheless, many mid-twentieth century ecologists and some ethologists, notably Konrad Lorenz, routinely assumed that natural selection would produce outcomes beneficial for the whole group or species, often without even realizing that individual-level selection guarantees no such thing. This uncritical ‘good of the species’ tradition came to an abrupt halt in the 1960s, due largely to the work of G.C. Williams (1966) and J. Maynard Smith (1964). These authors argued that group selection was an inherently weak evolutionary force, hence unlikely to promote interesting altruistic behaviours. This conclusion was supported by a number of mathematical models, which apparently showed that group selection would only have significant effects for a limited range of parameter values.  As a result, the notion of group selection fell into widespread disrepute in orthodox evolutionary circles; see Sober and Wilson 1998, Segestrale 2000, Okasha 2006, Leigh 2010 and Sober 2011 for details of the history of this debate.