Kin Recognition essays

Kin Recognition essays Biological evolution is known to be able to allow the development of such behaviors if they favor close kin (Hamilton 1964), which thus will be able to transmit the genes, on which the altruistic behavior is based, to future generations. There are several different types of altruism that organisms practice. Parental care is the most obvious; this is parents basically making sure that their offspring make it out of adolescence alive. Alarm calling is seen in many animals, this is done to warn animals of the same species that are near that there may be danger. Cooperation is when animals that live together work together for the better good of the community. Group care is more than one organisms taking care of the offspring, individuals that did not have the offspring help take care of them. Cannibalism, sperm recognition and reciprocal altruism are some of the many other forms of altruism that are seen in the biological world. The basis of this paper is kin recognition. Kin Recognition is the ability to identify relatives. More precisely, it is the differential treatment of members of the same species in a way that depends on their genetic relatedness to the discriminating individual. In this paper I will discuss two different elements, what function does kin recognition serve, and how do relatives differentiate to recognize each other. First the benefits of kin recognition will be discussed. The first benefit is relatives that help each other out, because natural selection favors those individuals that are most successful at propagating their distinctive alleles, which their relatives have as well. Kin are also less aggressive towards each other and they also help each other when they are faced with another organisms aggressive behavior. Another major benefit is the decrease in inbreeding from recognition. With inbreeding (or selfing), progeny can inherit multiple copies of deleterious alleles, leading to the ou...