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  • Brief Communications Arising
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Group selection versus group adaptation

Nature volume 524, pages E3–E4 (2015)Cite this article

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arising from J. N. Pruitt & C. J. Goodnight Nature 514, 359–362 (2014); doi:10.1038/nature13811

Pruitt and Goodnight1 describe how the ratio of aggressive versus docile females varies among naturally occurring colonies of the social spider Anelosimus studiosus, with larger colonies exhibiting more aggression in high-resource environments and the reverse in low-resource environments. They experimentally manipulate this ratio to show that it influences a colony’s reproductive success. Pruitt and Goodnight1 conclude that this work demonstrates group-level adaptation and contradicts an earlier theoretical analysis2. Here, I show that this conclusion is unfounded and arises from a conceptual misunderstanding. There is a Reply to this Brief Communication Arising by Pruitt, J. N. & Goodnight, C. J. Nature 524, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14597 (2015).

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Figure 1: Individual versus group optima.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biology, University of St Andrews, Dyers Brae, St Andrews, KY16 9TH, UK

    Andy Gardner

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  1. Andy Gardner
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L.G., J.D.J.G. and T.B. authored this paper; L.G. performed statistical analyses.

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Correspondence to Andy Gardner.

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The author declares no competing financial interests.

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Gardner, A. Group selection versus group adaptation. Nature 524, E3–E4 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14596

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