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There is a tendency to call something an evolutionary puzzle if some behavior is not optimal, and so elaborate, and often quite clever, possible explanations fo
by jonnycomputer 2y ago
There is a tendency to call something an evolutionary puzzle if some behavior is not optimal, and so elaborate, and often quite clever, possible explanations for why it's secretly optimal are devised.
But it's a mistake to think that non-optimal phenotypes require special explanations, when the obvious one is at hand: the optimal solution hasn't been found yet. In this case, the mechanisms that ensure that young are cared for are simply being triggered or activated by situations it wasn't "designed for", and nothing has evolved to prevent that from happening because it's an infrequent occurrence in the first place (and perhaps because any solution to it would be more expensive that it's worth?).
Life works with what its got, and natural selection (and other forms of selection) are not explanations, they're frameworks, models of a type of process. Actual explanations involve actual causal chains with actual stuff in the world.
- adamc 2y agoYep. Evolution is really just a description of the consequences of differential reproduction. Rare behaviors (adoption) that are not optimal but which are driven by drives (better motherhood) that may have big evolutionary upsides may simply not be selected against very effectively, and evolution is always limited by the pool of mutations and what is possible for the organism at that point. If there is no mutation that both eliminates adoption and preserves the beneficial effects of the drive, it may not happen...
- jonnycomputer 2y agoYeah, the mutation or recombination path that would lead to a solution may just be too far away, and involve troughs in the fitness landscape.
- antithesizer 2y agoThis is not necessarily suboptimal behavior; given that any genetically determined behavior will constitute a categorical imperative among those individuals carrying the genes, and whose offspring gets orphaned is to some extent random, the benefit of having their own offspring cared for in the event of their untimely death may outweigh the cost of raising offspring with whom they have less genetic material in common.