Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, 165 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
School of Biology, University of St Andrews, Greenside Place, St Andrews KY16 9TH, UK.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2022 Apr;37(4):346-358. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2021.11.007. Epub 2021 Dec 21.
Altruism is favored by natural selection provided that it delivers sufficient benefits to relatives. An altruist's valuation of her relatives depends upon the extent to which they carry copies of her genes - relatedness - and also on the extent to which they are able to transmit their own genes to future generations - reproductive value. However, although relatedness has received a great deal of attention with regard to altruism, reproductive value has been surprisingly neglected. We review how reproductive value modulates patterns of altruism in relation to individual differences in age, sex, and general condition, and discuss how social partners may manipulate each other's reproductive value to incentivize altruism. This topic presents opportunities for tight interplay between theoretical and empirical research.
利他主义受到自然选择的青睐，只要它能给亲属带来足够的好处。一个利他主义者对她亲属的重视程度取决于他们携带她基因的程度——亲缘关系——以及他们能够将自己的基因传递给后代的程度——生殖价值。然而，尽管亲缘关系在利他主义方面受到了广泛关注，但生殖价值却出人意料地被忽视了。我们回顾了生殖价值如何调节与个体年龄、性别和一般状况差异有关的利他主义模式，并讨论了社会伙伴如何相互操纵对方的生殖价值以激励利他主义。这个话题为理论和实证研究之间的紧密互动提供了机会。
