kin selection

American  

noun

Biology.

1. a form of natural selection that favors altruistic behavior toward close relatives resulting in an increase in the altruistic individual's genetic contribution to the next generation.

---

kin selection British  

noun

1. biology natural selection resulting from altruistic behaviour by animals towards members of the same species, esp their offspring or other relatives

---

Example Sentences

And this, says Robert Poulin, a parasitologist at the University of Otago who was not involved, is “a really cool case of kin selection pushed to the extreme.”

From Science Magazine • Sep. 21, 2023

The theory of kin selection holds that helping relatives can improve an individual’s evolutionary fitness because related individuals share a large proportion of their genes.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2018

The biologist William D. Hamilton made an end run around this problem in 1964 by invoking a strategy that Maynard Smith had called kin selection.

From Scientific American • Jul. 17, 2017

Male chimpanzees remain in their natal home, so their male-male bonds are built on the standard evolutionary principle of kin selection.

From New York Times • Sep. 10, 2016

Afterward, there was a firestorm of criticism and an unprecedented joint letter to the journal Nature—signed by 137 scientists—supporting the utility of kin selection theory.

From Slate • Apr. 3, 2014