Kin selection's domain

The Price equation pretty clearly implied that any sort of inheritance is likely to be subject to forces associated with kin selection. However, the message seems to have sunk in slowly. Kin selection was applied to DNA-mediated inheritance, but cultural inheritance was almost completely ignored by theorists.

A widespread lack of understanding of the evolutionary significance of cultural transmission could have been responsible. Also, when cultural kin selection was studied, it was often called something else. Tag-based cooperation was one popular term. Tag-based cooperation covers both genetic and cultural kin selection.

Mimicry is another area where kin selection applies. Sysyems involving mimicry may be broadly classified into organic-mimicing-organic, cultural-mimicing-cultural and cultural-mimicing-organic.

Based on the idea of similarity selection, another source of similarity in nature involves convergent evolution. Some convergent evolution involves copying from another organism - for example the parasites of swans may convergently evolve to be white. Other types involves copying from the environment, or from the laws of physics. Kin selection based on convergent evolution may happen - but it isn't easy to think of good examples. Convergent evolution is a research area for kin selection theorists.

Lastly, there's universal Darwinism to consider. Kin selection probably applies to abiotic systems as well - but again, it is not easy to think of good examples. The best cases of high-fidelity copying there are probably crystal growth and positional inheritance. Abiotic systems represent another research area.

Tag-Based Cooperation

Price's insight about the generality of selection made slow progress into the mainstream. Universal Darwinism is still struggling for acceptance in the mainstream, four decades after Price published. Another important aspect of the generality of selection - cultural kin selection - also laboured in obscurity for a long time. Some memetics enthusiasts understood it, but few others understood them. It wasn't until the year 2000 that the idea began to gather steam in academia - under the term "Tag-Based Cooperation".

A pioneering paper in 2001 - titled "Evolution of cooperation without reciprocity" - introduced the idea. The abstract said:

Here we use computer simulations to show that cooperation can arise when agents donate to others who are sufficiently similar to themselves in some arbitrary characteristic. Such a characteristic, or `tag', can be a marking, display, or other observable trait. Tag-based donation can lead to the emergence of cooperation among agents who have only rudimentary ability to detect environmental signals and, unlike models of direct or indirect reciprocity, no memory of past encounters is required.

"Tag-Based Cooperation" was recognised as a form of cultural kin selection by Sigmund and Nowak in 2001 - as follows:

the mechanism that leads to cooperation is a form of kin selection — either classical (if traits are inherited genetically) or social (if they are inherited culturally, like a dress code).

References

• Holland, John H. (1993) The Effect of Labels (Tags) on Social Interactions.
• Eshel, Ilan, Sansone,Emilia and Shaked, Avner (1999) The emergence of kinship behavior in structured populations of unrelated individuals.
• Hales, David (2000) Cooperation without Space or Memory: Tags, Groups and the Prisoner's Dilemma.
• Riolo, R.L., Cohen, M.D., Axelrod, R. (2001) Evolution of cooperation without reciprocity.
• Sigmund, Karl and Nowak, Martin (2001) Tides of tolerance.
• Hales, David (2001) Tag Based Cooperation in Artificial Societies.
• Hales, David (2002a) Cooperation and Specialisation without Kin Selection using Tags.
• Hales, David (2002b) Smart Agents Don’t Need Kin – Evolving Specialisation and Cooperation with Tags.
• Traulsen, Arne and Schuster, Heinz Georg (2003) Minimal model for tag-based cooperation
• Axelrod, Robert, Hammond, R.A, Grafen, A (2004) Altruism via kin-selection strategies that rely on arbitrary tags with which they coevolve.
• Hales, David (2004) Tags for All! – Understanding and Engineering Tag Systems.
• Axelrod, R, Hammond, R. A. & Grafen, A. (2004) Altruism via kin-selection strategies that rely on arbitrary tags with which they coevolve.
• Hales, David and Edmonds, B. (2005a) Applying a socially-inspired technique (tags) to improve cooperation in P2P Networks.
• Hales, David (2005b) Change Your Tags Fast! – A Necessary Condition for Cooperation?
• Marcozzi, Andrea, Hales, David, Jesi, Gian Paolo, Arteconi, Stefano and Babaoglu, Ozalp (2005) Tag-Based Cooperation in Peer-to-Peer Networks with Newscast.
• Jansen VA, van Baalen M. (2006) Altruism through beard chromodynamics.
• Tanimoto J. (2007) Does a tag system effectively support emerging cooperation? A study of indirect reciprocity involving a reputation system or a simple tag system in a one-shot, multi-player game.
• Antal, Tibor, Ohtsuki, Hisashi, Wakeley, John, Taylor, Peter D. and Nowak, Martin A. (2008) Evolution of cooperation by phenotypic similarity [alt]
• Sigmund, Karl (2009) Sympathy and similarity: The evolutionary dynamics of cooperation.
• Griffiths, Nathan and Luck, Michael (2010) Changing Neighbours: Improving Tag-Based Cooperation.
• Griffiths, Nathan and Luck, Michael (2010) Norm Emergence in Tag-Based Cooperation.
• Howley, Enda and Duggan, Jim (2011) Tag-Based Cooperation in N-Player Dilemmas.
• Laird, Robert A. (2011) Green-beard effect predicts the evolution of traitorousness in the two-tag Prisoner's dilemma.
• Uitdehaag JC (2011) Bet hedging based cooperation can limit kin selection and form a basis for mutualism.