Digital Organisms Shed Light on Mystery of Altruism NSF-
supported researchers use digital evolution techniques to
examine theories about the evolution of altruism November 15,
2010 One of the major questions in evolutionary biology is how
altruism, or the act of helping another individual at your own
expense, evolved. At first glance, "survival of the fittest" may
seem to be best achieved by selfish individuals. However,
altruistic behavior occurs in many species, and if it were not
adaptive, we would expect it to disappear through the process of
natural selection. Although, strictly speaking, specific genes
usually do not cause specific behaviors, behavior does have a
genetic component, and, thus, can be inherited. One classic
explanation for the evolution of altruism is that individuals
may have genes that cause them to behave altruistically towards
their relatives, who also have these "altruism genes," and thus
the genes are successfully passed to the next generation.
However, relatives only share a portio