Foundations of Social Evolution

By Steven A. Frank. 2019

508 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This is a treatment of one of the central problems in evolutionary biology, the evolution of social co-operation and conflict. Steven Frank tackles the problem with a combination of approaches: game theory, classical models of natural selection, quantitative genetics, and kin selection. He unites these with economic thought: a theory of model formation and comparative statics, the development of simple methods for analyzing complex problems, and notions of information and rationality. The text begins by developing the three measures of value used in biology - marginal value, reproductive value, and kin selection. It then combines these measures into a coherent framework, providing a unified analysis of social evolution in its full ecological and demographic context. Frank also extends the theory of kin selection by showing that relatedness has two distinct meanings. The first is a measure of information about social partners, with close affinity to theories of correlated equilibrium and Bayesian rationality in economic game theory. The second is a measure of the fidelity by which characters are transmitted to future generations - an extended notion of heritability. Throughout, Fran

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/17b51b4f631b47f77b2c0b8fd0f8392934f071ba

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In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Strong Reciprocity and the Roots of Human Morality (2008, background): “Moreover, sociality in insects cannot be accounted for in terms of kinship, so group selection is the most plausible mechanism accounting for the preeminence of social insects (Gadagkar, 1991; Frank, 1995, 1998; Wilson & Holldobler, 2005).”
One Giant Leap: How Insects Achieved Altruism and Colonial Life (2008, background): “This basic weakness has a great deal to do with what its defenders also stress as its basic strength, its allinclusiveness (Frank 1998, Foster et al. 2006a, 2006b, Grafen 2006).”
Polydomy in ants: what we know, what we think we know, and what remains to be done (2007, unknown): “Whereas precise theoretical models treat the effects on resource allocation of traits such as polygyny, multiple mating or worker reproduction (Crozier & Pamilo, 1996; Frank, 1998), the lack of theory specifically treating polydomy hampers progress in this domain.”
The Darwinian Destiny of An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (2003, background): “…économique — vol. 54, N° 2, mars 2003, p. 355-384 where all members of the posterior set are sufficiently similar to some members of the anterior set, and where the resulting frequencies of entities are systematically related to their properties (Price, 1995; Frank, 1998; Knudsen, 2002b, 2002c).”
REPRESSION OF COMPETITION AND THE EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION (2003, methodology): “Studying the joint evolution of two characters can be complicated (Lande and Arnold 1983; Frank 1998).”