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Since when is group selection a defunct theory?



Since we understood that it is the individual gene that is the unit of selection. Even Wikipedia reads: "The vast majority of behavioural biologists have not been convinced by renewed attempts to revisit group selection as a plausible mechanism of evolution."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection#Criticism


Group selection is as obvious as the nose on your face. So many, many animal populations have non-breeding members that benefit the community. Individual selection cannot possibly be used to support that.


Name one where the system is not contingent on immediate family helping immediate family, or to be more precise, one which is not explained by Hamilton's Law.

There is no individual selection either, by the way, that's another commmon misconception. You don't push out copies of yourself. There is only the selection of individual genes.


And the genes are in a population pool, not standing by themselves. So the only selection is group selection, that is, the survival of that part of the group that contains advantageous genes.




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