Professor of biology - By Megan Morley Thomas To this day,
biologists debate about how altruistic behaviors evolve and
persist. Sterile ants faithfully tend their queen with no chance
of reproducing themselves. Bees lay down their lives to defend
the hive. "Why do they do that?" asks University of Vermont
biologist Charles Goodnight. "Doesn't natural selection drive
animals to behaviors that increase their own chances of
survival, not those of others?" This question underlies the
decades-long debate between two camps of scientists. On one
side, are those who argue in favor of "kin selection," in which
individuals are altruistic to those who share their genes. On
the other side, are those who argue in favor of "group
selection," (or "multilevel selection") in which altruism arises
from being part of a group. In a recent edition of the journal
Nature a team of 18 scientists, including UVM's Goodnight, show
that the two traditional approaches are actually mathematically
equivalent. One in the same "What we did i