Everyday Thinking

Binghamton University researchers explore altruism's unexpected ally -- selfishness

Just as religions dwell upon the eternal battle between good and evil, angels and devils, evolutionary theorists dwell upon the eternal battle between altruistic and selfish behaviors in the Darwinian struggle for existence. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), evolutionary theorists at Binghamton University suggest that selfishness might not be such a villain after all.

Omar Tonsi Eldakar and David Sloan Wilson propose a novel solution to this problem in their article, which is available in the online Early Edition of PNAS.  They point out that selfish individuals have their own incentive to get rid of other selfish individuals within their own group.

Eldakar and Wilson consider a behavioral strategy called "Selfish Punisher," which exploits altruists and punishes other selfish individuals, including other selfish punishers. This strategy might seem hypocritical in moral terms but it is highly successful in Darwinian terms, according to their theoretical model published in PNAS and a computer simulation model published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. Selfish punishers can invade the population when rare but then limit each other, preventing the altruists from being completely eliminated.

Read the full article here.

'Out of Africa' migration left stamps on European genetic diversity

Human migration from Africa to Europe more than 30,000 years ago appears to have left a mark on the genes of Europeans today.

A Cornell-led study, reported in the Feb. 21 issue of the journal Nature, compared more than 10,000 sequenced genes from 15 African-Americans and 20 European-Americans. The results suggest that European populations have proportionately more harmful variations, though it is unclear what effects these variations actually may have on the overall health of Europeans.

Computer simulations suggest that the first Europeans comprised small and less diverse populations. That would have allowed mildly harmful genetic variations within those populations to become more frequent over time, the researchers report.

"What we may be seeing is a 'population genetic echo' of the founding of Europe," said Carlos Bustamante, assistant professor of biological statistics and computational biology at Cornell and senior co-author with Andrew Clark, a professor of molecular biology and genetics.

Read the full article here.

Human Evolution Speeding Up

Look out, future, because here we come: scientists say the speed of human evolution increased rapidly during the last 40,000 years -- and it's only going to get faster.

The findings, published today by a team of U.S. anthropologists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, overturn the theory that modern life's relative ease has slowed or even stopped human adaptation. Selective pressures are still at work; they just happen to be different than those faced by our distant ancestors.

"We're more different from people 5,000 years ago than they were from Neanderthals," said study co-author and University of Utah anthropologist Henry Harpending.

In the study, researchers analzyed genomes from 270 people belonging to four disparate ethnic groups: Han Chinese, Africa's Yoruba tribe, Japanese and Utah Mormons. By comparing areas of difference and similarity, they determined that about seven percent of the genome has undergone significant change since the end of the last Ice Age.

Read the full article here.

Book Review: Evolution for Everyone

In a conversation with a physician a while ago I asked why a certain condition developed in the human body the way it did.  I was surprised when he told me that the pathways were formed as our species evolved.  It was the first time I’d encountered Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in a practical workaday explanation.  We humans weren’t simply “descended from apes” but are the result of an ancient (and apparently ongoing) process.  You and I and everything that lives are part of the evolutionary adventure.

Of course, we’re the only species that can understand this, and the implications for humanity are such that it should be no surprise that Darwin’s theories raise religious, ethical and social discomfort.  They did in Darwin’s time and they do today.

David Sloan Wilson, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University who has approached the admittedly ambitious task of explaining evolution in a clear and practical way to allow it to lose its controversial status.  In his book Evolution for Everyone (Delacorte Press, 2007) he takes a hands-on approach to scientific investigation and experimentation.  Every bee swarm, compost pile and marching band displays processes of adaptation, natural selection and survival.

Principles of evolution are taught by Dr. Wilson and his Binghamton University colleagues in the Evolutionary Studies Program, known also as EvoS, and described by BU as, “the first of its kind to teach evolution in a truly integrated fashion, beginning with core principles and extending in all directions, from molecular biology to art and religion.”  This multidisciplinary program is open to students in all areas of study, and attracts individuals from all religious and ethnic backgrounds.

Evolutionary theory can explain much, but it doesn’t by itself explain everything.  For example, Dr. Wilson has questioned why people laugh.  Laughter doesn’t do anything for us, and seems “superfluous or downright detrimental to our survival and reproduction.”  But as Dr. Wilson learned through the research of his student Matt Gervais (and with credit to thinkers from Aristotle to Darwin himself) such inquiry requires a multidisciplinary approach, including psychology, neurobiology and primatology.  We discover that there are different kinds of laughter.  The laugh we hear when someone tells a joke is called Duchenne laughter, after the 19th century French neurophysiologist Duchenne de Boulogne.  It triggers responses from the oldest and most unevolved parts of the brain.  Everything else – nervous laughter, chuckles during a conversation – is non-Duchenne laughter and “activates areas of the brain associated with our advanced cognitive abilities.”

That wasn’t an especially funny story.  But Mr. Gervais’ research was submitted to a prominent scientific journal and reviewed favorably by academic “peers” who weren’t aware of his status as a lowly undergraduate. 

Placed in a social context, Dr. Wilson notes that in ancient times when life was nasty and brutish human laughter probably (that word occurs frequently in Evolution for Everyone) initially evolved as a signal for identifying times of safety and abundance.  To arrive at this insight it was necessary to understand evolution in a way “that evokes pleasure rather than fear” and to have a supportive scholarly environment.  It is one of the outcomes of EvoS that allows David Sloan Wilson to subtitle his book “How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives.”

It may surprise many readers that David Sloan Wilson, a professed atheist, writes about religion warmly and with keen understanding.  His previous book Darwin’s Cathedral sought to bring evolution and religious belief into harmony.  That book was a scholarly work not intended for a mass readership.  As the author said during a July 7, 2001 appearance on WSKG Radio’s OFF THE PAGE, he’s “a writer trapped in a scientist’s body.”  Evolution for Everyone, as the title infers, is a personal, readable and often chatty book (much of it was written in Wilson’s treehouse in a forest south of Binghamton) that draws Dr. Wilson and the reader deeper into the questions that evolution can answer.

- by Bill Jaker, host of WSKG Public Radio's Off the Page