How did collective animals evolve genetically?

[charles brough]

A number of animals such as ants, jellyfish, sponges, slime mold slugs and even we humans are multicellular colonies or live as social groups. Is that explained through genetic evolution? How?

[Darby]

Evolution happens in populations anyway, so colonial groups can be selected as collectives, as well as member traits.

[charles brough]

Evolution happens in populations anyway, so colonial groups can be selected as collectives, as well as member traits.

How does that work?

[Tomn]

To Darby: In addition to Brough's proposed question, could you also elaborate on how the different types of cells (brain cells,muscle cells, immune system cells, etc.) came to be before or after "collectives" were formed. I am very curious about this and have found no answers.

[charles brough]

.-facts, observed events, plausible explanations, and solid evidence
Tomn Garter

That somehow seems unable to explain it!

[aptitude]

Evolution happens in populations anyway, so colonial groups can be selected as collectives, as well as member traits.

How does that work?

This is actually quite an interesting topic.

According to Richard Dawkins, the basic unit of evolution (what evolution ultimately acts on) is not individuals, but allele. An allele "wants" to increase its frequency. Thus, if an organism helps a closely related organism, it is ultimately benefiting itself because it is increasing the frequency of its alleles. This is the reason why bees have evolved to live in colonies. Another reason is the "tit for tat principle", or "if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours", which is observed extensively in primates.

This is actually a very vast topic called sociobiology, but I limited my response to 1 paragraph.

[charles brough]

O.L. Wilson developed the theory of sociolobiology and what I read in his book was disappointing to me. The worst thing was he developed a whole new glossory for every term and defined them only in terms of each other. But mainly. he worked from the angle of social-genetic change. My whole work has been to show that our whole cultural heritage has evolved without genetic change. Of course, there has been some assorted minor genetic changes in the last some 40,000 years, but nothing that would or even needs to have occurred to account for the accumulation of our immense cultural heritage and the fact that we have managed to populate the globe and dominate it in the way we do.

So, my developing of the concept of social evolution is not really biology, but I like to go into the biology forums because more biologists are non-theists than any other field and understanding social evolution requires a severe objectivity not generally found among social theorists.

[Darby]

You could make a case that a gene pool is actually being selected - a collection of alleles that can be differentially expressed to contribute in some cases, to individuals, and in others, to the local group, and in others, to a whole population.

[charles brough]

You could make a case that a gene pool is actually being selected - a collection of alleles that can be differentially expressed to contribute in some cases, to individuals, and in others, to the local group, and in others, to a whole population.

But the groups, teams or pools are constantly changing and interchanging members. Seems to me the genetic effect would be so minute and be of such complexity as to be beyond understanding.