Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, 100 Ecology, 1987 Upper Buford Circle, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2004 Mar;19(3):135-40. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2003.10.004.
Altruism is generally understood to be behavior that benefits others at a personal cost to the behaving individual. However, within evolutionary biology, different authors have interpreted the concept of altruism differently, leading to dissimilar predictions about the evolution of altruistic behavior. Generally, different interpretations diverge on which party receives the benefit from altruism and on how the cost of altruism is assessed. Using a simple trait-group framework, we delineate the assumptions underlying different interpretations and show how they relate to one another. We feel that a thorough examination of the connections between interpretations not only reveals why different authors have arrived at disparate conclusions about altruism, but also illuminates the conditions that are likely to favor the evolution of altruism.
利他主义通常被理解为一种行为，它以行为个体的个人成本为代价，使他人受益。然而，在进化生物学中，不同的作者对利他主义的概念有不同的解释，导致对利他行为进化的不同预测。一般来说，不同的解释在利他主义的受益方和利他主义成本的评估方式上存在分歧。我们使用一个简单的特征群框架，阐明了不同解释背后的假设，并展示了它们之间的关系。我们认为，对解释之间联系的深入考察不仅揭示了为什么不同的作者对利他主义得出了截然不同的结论，而且还阐明了可能有利于利他主义进化的条件。
