Fill in the blank
According to the current dogma, _________ form the proper unit of selection.
1. genes
2. individuals
3. groups
4. species
5. ecosystem-levels
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Update:
To crib a popular metaphor, species is to ecosystem as cancer cell is to organism. This seems an ironic non-answer packaged for journalists since what we don’t know about metastasis is…significant!
David Joblonski: Species selection may not build horns, but it can determine how many species have horns or how long horns persist.
There are only a few examples of group selection, mostly agricultural, but it may simply be for lack of looking: google Alexandra Penn and biofilm.
David Sloan Wilson makes the loudest case for ecosystem-level selection.
Individuals is probably the current “dogma”, but I think most evolutionary biologists would acknowledge selection occurs on all of those levels to some extent.
I’m all for individuals, though I do like the gene-centric view. The gene-centric view gets complicated to think about for me because of linkage and epistasis, but I guess that’s what it’s all about. I had the idea of group/species selection so pounded out of me in undergrad that I’m having trouble conceiving of its importance even though I’ve read some pretty convincing arguments recently.
Hey gillT, what’s the right answer?