Why is ‘blood thicker than water’? Are we—are our genes—violent or pacific? What is the best sex ratio? Why are plants and animals sexual? Why do we grow old and die? Over what do our chromosomes quarrel? Such questioning, born from a love of nature, has motivated the life work of W. D. Hamilton, widely acknowledged as the most important theoretical biologist of the 20th century. His papers continue to exert an enormous influence and they are now being republished for the first time. Each one is introduced by an autobiographical essay written for this collection.
This first volume contains all of Hamilton’s publications prior to 1981, a set especially relevant to social behaviour, kinship theory, sociobiology and the notion of ‘selfish genes’. It includes several of the most read and famous papers of modern biology. A forthcoming volume will be devoted to the second half of Hamilton’s life’s work, on sex and sexual selection.
_Narrow Roads of Gene Land_ will be welcomed by professionals, graduate students and undergraduates from a wide range of disciplines, from evolution, population genetics, animal behaviour and evolutionary ecology, to genetics, social anthropology, sociology, psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, economics and the history of science. But the readership will by no means be restricted to an academic one. The introductions are wholly accessible to non-specialists and they will fascinate and entertain any general reader with an interest in science, providing them with a unique insight into what the life and the enthusiasms of a modern scientist/philosopher are like.
W. D. HAMILTON is a Royal Society Research Professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford. He is known throughout the world for his seminal work on social evolution (kin selection), sex ratio evolution and , more recently, for work on the involvement of parasites in sexual selection and on the evolutionary maintenance of sexuality. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His recent awards include the Albert Wander Foundation Prize (Switzerland, 1992), the Crafoord Prize (Sweden, 1993) and the Kyoto Prize (Japan, 1993).
Author(s): William D. Hamilton
Series: The Collected Papers of William D. Hamilton
Publisher: W.H. Freeman Spektrum
Year: 1996
Language: English
Pages: 566
Tags: genetics, biology, social behavior in animals, inclusive fitness, George R. Price, multilevel selection, sex ratio, aging, senescence, fig wasps, herd behavior, altruism, evolutionary stable strategies (ESS), eugenics, dispersal, herbivore defense, entomology
- Preface
1. Shoulders of Giants: "The evolution of altruistic behaviour"
2. Hamilton’s Rule: "The genetical evolution of social behaviour, I and II"
3. Live Now, Pay Later: "The moulding of senescence by natural selection"
4. Gender and Genome: "Extraordinary sex ratios"
5. Spite and Price: "Selfish and spiteful behaviour in an evolutionary model"
6. America: "Selection of selfish and altruistic behaviour in some extreme models"
7. Panic Stations: "Geometry for the selfish herd"
8. Sorority Avenue: "Altruism and related phenomena, mainly in social insects"
9. Friends, Romans, Groups. . .: "Innate social aptitudes of man: an approach from evolutionary genetics"
10. Venus Too Kind: "Gamblers since life began: barnacles, aphids, elms"
11. Elm and Australian: "Dispersal in stable habitats"
12. Funeral Feasts: "Evolution and diversity under bark"
13. Discordant Insects: "Wingless and fighting males in fig wasps and other insects"
14. Astringent Leaves: "Low nutritive quality as defence against herbivores"
15. Advanced Arts of Exit: "Evolutionarily stable dispersal strategies"
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- Name Index
- Subject Index
