Geometry for the Selfish Herd by William Donald Hamilton英文电子书.pdf

J. theor. Biol. (1971) 31, 295-311 Geometry for the Selfish Herd W. D. HAMILTON Department of Zoology, Imperial College, London, S. W.7, England (Received 28 September 1970) This paper presents an antithesis to the view that gregarious behaviour is evolved through benefits to the population or species. Following Galton (1871) and Williams (1964) gregarious behaviour is considered as a form of cover-seeking in which each animal tries to reduce its chance of being caught by a predator. It is easy to see how pruning of marginal individuals can maintain centripetal instincts in already gregarious species; some evidence that marginal pruning actually occurs is summarized. Besides this, simply defined models are used to show that even in non-gregarious species selection is likely to favour individuals who stay close to others. Although not universal or unipotent, cover-seeking is a widespread and important element in animal aggregation, as the literature shows. Neglect of the idea has probably followed from a general disbelief that evolution can be dysgenic for a species. Nevertheless, selection theory provides no support for such disbelief in the case of species with outbreeding or un- subdivided populations. The model for two dimensions involves a complex problem in geo- metrical probability which has relevance a