Am Nat. 2019 Jun;193(6):841-851. doi: 10.1086/703113. Epub 2019 Apr 17.
Kin selection theory suggests that altruistic behaviors can increase the fitness of altruists when recipients are genetic relatives. Although selection can favor the ability of organisms to preferentially cooperate with close kin, indiscriminately helping all group mates may yield comparable fitness returns if relatedness within groups is very high. Here, we show that meerkats () are largely indiscriminate altruists who do not alter the amount of help provided to pups or group mates in response to their relatedness to them. We present a model showing that indiscriminate altruism may yield greater fitness payoffs than kin discrimination where most group members are close relatives and errors occur in the estimation of relatedness. The presence of errors in the estimation of relatedness provides a feasible explanation for associations between kin discriminative helping and group relatedness in eusocial and cooperatively breeding animals.
亲缘选择理论表明，当接受者是遗传亲属时，利他行为可以提高利他主义者的适应度。虽然选择可以使生物体更倾向于与近亲合作，但如果群体内部的相关性非常高，无差别地帮助所有群体成员可能会产生相当的适应度回报。在这里，我们表明，猫鼬（）主要是无差别的利他主义者，它们不会根据与幼崽或群体成员的亲缘关系来改变提供帮助的数量。我们提出了一个模型，表明在大多数群体成员是近亲且在亲缘关系估计中存在错误的情况下，无差别利他主义可能会比亲缘歧视带来更大的适应度回报。在估计亲缘关系中存在错误的情况下，为合作繁殖动物中亲缘关系识别帮助与群体亲缘关系之间的关联提供了一个可行的解释。
