Can Selfish Gene Theory Explain Turbulence?

Explores whether selfish gene theory and evolutionary stabilization strategies (ESS) can explain the phenomenon of oviposition in birds. Analyze the genetic and evolutionary advantages of ovipositing and nonovipositing behaviors.

 

In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins argues that genes are the key unit of evolution, and that the nature of genes to replicate and spread themselves is called selfishness, and it is through this selfishness that life evolves and thrives. According to the selfish gene theory, all life is nothing more than a machine for the preservation and propagation of genes.
Dawkins argues that when organisms fight for something, they use the Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS). When intra- or inter-species fights break out for profit, the strategy used can be either disadvantageous or advantageous to the opposing strategy. Within a species, the ESS that results in the highest average benefit for each individual is implemented. This is also true in interspecies fights, and while organisms that adopt strategies that differ from the ESS will almost certainly disappear, the proportion of ESS in a population will change if individuals emerge that have strategies that allow them to survive and reproduce better than others in the existing system. The authors suggest that this phenomenon can be explained at the genetic level.
As I read the book, I wondered if I could make a connection between ESS strategies and the phenomenon of turbidity. Furthermore, I wondered if the ESS strategy could be extended to cross-species problems. I wondered if the ESS strategy could be extended to cross-species problems. Of course, the phenomenon itself is covered very little in the book, but for our group, it seemed like a topic with a lot to say. In fact, from the point of view of the person who is being bullied, it seems that it is not easy to explain and understand in light of the selfishness of genes. In the text, it is said that the cuckoos fledge by targeting the blind spot of maternal instinct, but why were individuals with genes with this blind spot not culled, and why did no special individuals appear due to mutations? In fact, if genes were selfish, all birds would have to lay eggs. But this is not the case. The ESS strategy is an evolutionary stabilization strategy, and of course, in the books, it’s a concept that only makes sense within a species, but since ESS is a strategy that is stabilized by the selfishness of each individual, can we extend it to a cross-species concept? I thought to myself. Of course, my knowledge of biology is limited at the moment, but I wondered why a non-taciturn bird would incubate the eggs of other birds instead of laying them. Also, as we can see in the prisoner’s dilemma, male and female ESS, and various other examples, the author uses numbers to evaluate the effectiveness of a strategy, but there are no clear criteria for such numbers. So, while I appreciated the attempt to explain phenomena in biological systems with readily available theories, I realized that there are obvious limitations.
Therefore, I will focus on this aspect and try to explain the interspecies phenomenon of turbidity through an extension of the ESS theory.
The phenomenon, which is characteristic of some birds, seems at first glance to fit Dawkins’ theory of selfish genes, because by laying in other nests, the birds can concentrate on laying more eggs at a time when other birds are raising their young and thus produce a larger number of individuals, which is consistent with the selfishness of genes, where genes strive to increase their own chances of survival. However, if laying birds have this advantage, then other birds should also lay eggs according to the selfishness of their genes, but they don’t, so the selfish gene theory has a problem explaining the phenomenon of laying.
One way to solve this problem is the ESS strategy, which is discussed in this book only within species. However, since ESS is a strategy stabilized by the selfishness of each individual, it is not unreasonable to think that ESS can also be applied to cross-species phenomena. Therefore, we hypothesized that “introducing ESS can smoothly explain turbidity phenomena” and looked for evidence to support it. First of all, since ESS is a result of self-interested behavior, it is expected that self-interested species will eventually follow a stabilized strategy. Since the cuckoo’s selfishness is also a consequence of the cuckoo’s selfishness, it seems that ESS can be extended to the cuckoo’s selfishness. While Dawkins’ explanation alone cannot explain the existence of non-laying birds, ESS is a theory that explains competition between individuals within a species, and if it can be applied to competition between species, it could provide a seamless explanation for why non-laying birds exist in nature.
“In The Selfish Gene, Maynard Smith argues that genes make a strategic cost-benefit calculation about whether to fight a competitor or not, and then avoid unnecessary competition by waiting for an opportunity or escalating the fight. Maynard Smith theorizes that a population’s different responses to competition will eventually become the survival strategy of choice for nearly all of the population, resulting in the existence of an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). According to this theory, the acquisition of a stable strategy, once it becomes dominant in a multi-population fight, remains subject to natural selection and leads to divergent behavior. To use a specific example from the book, suppose there are only two groups in a population of a species and they are called the hawks and the doves. The hawks are the more militant and unyielding group, and the doves are the more peaceful group. Let’s assign “points” to the fighting groups. For example, 50 points for winners, 0 points for losers, -100 points for seriously injured, and -10 points for wasting time. And assume that these scores are proportional to the survival of the genes. The question we need to ask is not which group is the most dominant, but which strategy produces the highest score, i.e., the evolutionarily stable strategy. Let’s say we have a population that is all pigeons. They won’t fight. It would be a waste of time, so the winner half of the individuals would score +50-10=40 and the loser half would score 0-10=-10. In this case, the average score of the individuals is +15.
Next, suppose a hawk faction appeared in the population above. They would beat all the other doves, so they would score +50 points. Then the Doves don’t fight, so they get 0 points, and the average score of the population is +25 points.
Finally, there is a population where all members are hawks. In this case, half of the winners will receive a score of +50, but half of the losers will be seriously injured and lose 100 points, so the average score of the population will be -25. Taking the three cases together, we can conclude that the most stable strategy is when the hawks and doves are in the right proportion (using the above calculation, doves:hawks = about 5:7).
Now let’s extend this strategy to the interspecies context. First, assume that birds have only two egg-laying strategies, and that the flocks with these tendencies are called “turbulent” and “non-turbulent”. We will give a score of 100 points for hatching the eggs of the incubator, 30 points for hatching the eggs of the non-incubator, and -20 points for failing to hatch the eggs of the incubator, since the incubator’s eggs hatch without any effort. The scoring is based on the fact that the opportunity cost to the non-taxoliths is very high compared to the benefit to the taxoliths, so we assign them 100 and 30 points.
As above, let’s say we have an ecosystem where all of the individuals are non-taxolithophiles, and they will all successfully hatch their individual eggs, giving them 30 points for an average score of +30.
Next, suppose that a taklanar appeared in the above ecosystem. They will lay their eggs in the nests of non-turkeys, and the non-turkeys will try to hatch both their own eggs and the eggs of the turkeys. In this case, the turbot’s score would be 100 and the non-turbot’s score would be 30. Thus, the average score within the entire ecosystem would be +65.
The last ecosystem is composed entirely of turbulent birds. In this case, the ecosystem will not run smoothly because they will all lay their eggs in other people’s nests. Therefore, egg transfer will be repeated over and over again, and it will be difficult for individual eggs to hatch. The average score will be -20. If we extend the discussion a bit further, we can see that the maximum score will be achieved when the proportion of turbans and non-turbans remains constant. We can also predict that this equilibrium will persist.
There are obviously limitations to the arbitrariness of the scoring criteria used in the numerical calculations. I wonder if the number of turbid and non-turbid bird species would have been more appropriately distributed if we had actually surveyed the number of species.
The conclusion that can be drawn from the above is that the optimal phenomenon occurs when there is a constant ratio of oviparous to non-oviparous birds. Similar to the selfishness of genes, the reason why turbinates incubate the eggs of other birds can be considered a “selfish behavior” for the survival rate of turbinates. Otherwise, the birds themselves must have diverged from the same ancestor, so there must have been a time when they were the same species. Therefore, the taklanpa and the non-taklanpa must have diverged within the same species first, and the gap between their genes widened, leading to speciation. In other words, the logic of ESS is applied at the beginning, and this leads to speciation, which then becomes fixed.