Powers, Simon T., Rob Mills, Alexandra S. Penn, and Richard A. Watson. “Social environment construction provides an adaptive explanation for new levels of individuality.” (2009): 18-21.
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During a major transition, former free-living entities relinquish their own individuality and aggregate into groups, such that the group becomes an evolutionary individual in its own right (Maynard Smith and Szathm´ary, 1995; Michod, 1999). Essential to this process is cooperation, for the group members must cooperate to contribute to the success of the higher-level unit, rather than pursue independent, competitive, interests. While it is well-known from social evolution theory that population structure can promote such cooperation (Hamilton, 1964; Wilson, 1975), little attention has been paid to how such structure can itself arise via adaptive evolutionary mechanisms. We postulate here a process by which selection on individual environment-modifying traits can create conditions favourable for the evolution of cooperation, and, in extreme cases, for a transition to a new level of individuality. We term such processes, by which an individual evolves an influence over with whom it interacts, “social environment construction”, which can be viewed as a type of niche construction