Synopses & Reviews
Why is `blood thicker than water'? Are we innately violent or pacific? Why are plants and animals sexual? Why do we grow old and die? Such questions have motivated the life-work of W.D. Hamilton, widely acknowledged as the most important theoretical biologist of the 20th century. His papers continue to exert an enormous influence and they are now being republished for the first time. This first volume contains all of Hamilton's publications prior to 1981, a set especially relevant to social behavior, kinship theory, sociobiology, and the notion of `selfish genes'. Each paper is introduced by an autobiographical essay written especially for this collection. Accessible to non-specialists, this fascinating volume features several of the most read and famous papers of modern biology.
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Shoulders of giants: The evolution of altruistic behaviour
2. Hamilton's rule: The genetical evolution of social behaviour, I and II
3. Live now, pay later: The moulding of senescence by natural selection
4. Gender and genome: Extraordinary sex ratios
5. Spite and Price: Selfish and spiteful behaviour in an evolutionary model
6. America: Selection of selfish and altruistic behaviour in some extreme models
7. Panic stations: Geometry for the selfish herd
8. Sorority avenue: Altruism and related phenomena, mainly in social insects
9. Friends, Romans, groups: Innate social aptitudes of man: an approach from evolutionary genetics
10. Venus too kind: Gamblers since life began: Barnacle, aphids, elms
11. Elm and Australian: Dispersal in stable habitats
12. Funeral Feasts: Evolution and diversity under bark
13. Discordant insects: Wingless and fighting males in fig wasps and other insects
14. Astringent leaves: Low nutritive quality as defence against herbivores
15. Advanced arts of exit: Evolutionarily stable dispersal strategies
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Index