Selfish parents, altruistic children and helpers’ infertility
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: While Hamilton's rule has traditionally attributed non-reproductive phenotypes to kin selection and altruistic behavior, we argue that infertile offspring can emerge through selfish parental resource allocation strategies without necessitating offspring altruism. By developing a model incorporating reproductive budget constraints, per-offspring investment costs, and fertility parameters, we derive the conditions under which producing infertile helpers optimizes parental fitness. The model predicts infertile phenotypes become evolutionarily advantageous when total offspring number exceeds a threshold or when per-offspring costs are sufficiently low. Parental optimization generates testable predictions differentiating it from pure altruism models, particularly the emergence of bimodal rather than continuous fertility distributions. The framework elucidates why sophisticated divisions of labor characterize species at opposite extremes of the offspring investment spectrum-social insects with minimal peroffspring costs and humans with exceptionally high investment-while remaining absent in species with intermediate investment levels. While parental optimization and Hamiltonian altruism represent distinct evolutionary pathways to helper infertility, we argue both mechanisms can be situated within inclusive fitness theory and may operate synergistically in natural populations.
Source: Journal of Theoretical Biology
Author: Ugo Pagano
Institution: University of Siena
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,550
Funder: Università degli Studi di Siena
OpenAlex ID: W4411264574