The selfish evolution.

As I skimmed through the pages of the first chapter of the book I’ve lately been trying to decipher, I knew it was the sixth time already and I really needed to read further. However, there’s something about this chapter that keeps me stuck in between the lines and the name of the chapter, “Why are people?”, itself. Well, if you have heard of the title and guessed the book, you’re welcome! We’re friends now.

I reckon it’s a better environment now to be talking Darwin. As the author, Richard Dawkins says,

…but it was Darwin who first put together a coherent and tenable account of why we exist.

Oh and just by a grim chance (just kidding), if you haven’t any idea of the book in concern, it’s called “The Selfish Gene”.

You see, I’d be quoting Dawkins a numerous times here and there for the sake of his succinct gesture of deploying thoughts. I would rather then choose to elaborate on them. Pardon me already if this gets lengthy because describing the reason behind existence is difficult not just philosophically, but evolutionarily too.

As far as the Toms, Dicks and Harrys know, there are two mainstream theories put by Charles Darwin shortly referred to as “the struggle for existence” and “the survival of the fittest”. What Dawkins questions here is who is to be benefitted amidst the total set of populations here?

Erroneous assumptions were made that-

…the important thing in evolution is the good of the *species* or the group rather than the good of the *individual* or the gene.

I could be helpful here. Allow me.

The two theories put by Darwin, viz., struggle for existence and survival of the fittest must take some parameters under consideration. What are those parameters really? Most of us have a preconception that they are individuals in a group or a species, but the real competition is in between the genes. Out of a total population of the genes that struggle for existence only a few are “selected” by the evolutionary forces of nature.

Note that forces aren’t measured in Newton here. We need to spare him somewhere.

A set of genes are chosen from the rest to be propagated or transmitted into the next generation. These genes have portrayed “ruthless selfishness” over the others so as to be selected by nature. Due to this significant selfishness, these genes turn out to “exist” out-struggling the rest. Now, these genes, generally, are collectively found in an individual of a group or a species and hence, one tends to see that an individual from a species gets selected in such a race. All the individuals that carry these genes that are selected in this competition form a population or sometimes a subspecies.

Evolutionary forces of nature could be presented by predation of these, natural calamities, a sudden change in the environment or the geographical location of the individual carrying the gene itself.

I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a successful gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behavior.

Why would someone be so inclined to regard a sub-molecular part of an organism to be selfish or altruistic? Genes are taken to be selfish here because they’ve consistently tried to win a race just for the sake of existence and to be heritable often discarding other genes of the family. Nature has, by law, influenced genes to behave that way. Layman terms laid, say, in a forest, there were beetles of red and green coloured bodies. Red and green fall in the gene family of body colour. Red was predominant here. However, in a random mating of beetles, few green beetles were born. Eventually, as crows preyed on beetles, the reds were easily located, but the green could camouflage with the leaves of the trees. Thus, the number of the reds kept falling and the greens mated to give rise to more green beetles. This is a classic example of natural selection where a predominant body colour gets discarded and a recessive body colour is chosen. The gene encoding for the green colour in the beetles is selfish and wins over the gene that encoded for the red colour in beetles.

I assume that one knows that every morphological, anatomical and physiological character is coded by some gene or the other in the organism itself.

As previously mentioned, evolutionary forces could be of various kinds, the above sited example is one of them. It talks of the predator-prey interaction leading to the selection of a gene in particular.

Genetic drift is defined as sudden change in the gene frequency. Gene frequency is measured as the number of times a particular gene occurs in a population of a particular organism. For instance, if the forest faces a severe drought, then most of the beetles in the forest, irrespective of their body colour, don’t grow in size and some die. If this period lasts for a significant period of time, this trait of being smaller than the usual size is incorporated into the genome (the complete genetic makeup) of some of the beetles. Now, when upon the return of normal conditions, the beetles which could not grow due to lack of water, grow back into their original size, however, the beetles that had inherited this trait of small size remain small due to their genetic behaviour. Now, we have a population of large and small beetles. Where’s selfishness here? Here’s it. The small beetles are at an advantage than the larger beetles because they now need less amount of nutrients and water to live, can survive during harsh conditions and can escape predators by easily hiding at smaller nooks. Whereas the large beetles would have to go through the same struggle again when unsuitable conditions arrive. This way the genes that let the beetles stay small in size are selfish over the genes that express the natural size of the beetles.

Let’s examine a realistic example this time.

1850, England. No industries, no pollution. Peppered moths with black and white bodies with black spots were found. These moths were mostly located on lichens(white fungus) on the tree barks. The white moths could camouflage with the lichens really well, but the black moths could not. Hence, just like the green beetles, these moths saved themselves from predators. The number of black moths decreased with time.

Note: Lichens are mutual association of algae and fungi that detect pollution. They cannot grow in polluted areas.

Now, as the industrial revolution struck near the end of 1800s in England, pollution began to rise and the lichens were killed. The tree barks blackened. This led to the easy camouflage of the black moths while the white moths were now prone to predation. Steadily, the number of black moths rose. Eventually, due to the pollution, the black moths reproduced more black moths and the few white moths left adapted themselves to produce black moths. Hence, both the kinds produced only black moths now. This is an example of microevolution due to an environmental change or degradation. This phenomenon is referred to as “industrial melanism” where pollution caused due to industrialization influences genes to evolve. Here, the gene causing the black colour survived over the gene causing the white colour. Hence, the black gene was regarded as selfish.

It’d be sane to spot the difference out between molecular level of “selfishness” and behavioural selfishness. A gene is looked upon to be selfish because it does not help the other gene of the same family to express itself in the race held in the picture. It is regarded selfish for being efficient or apt enough to be selected from the rest. This eventually makes up an individual which is selfish in nature’s eyes. This, however, has no relevance with the organism-level of selfishness portrayed in the behaviour. Dawkins, when he said, that the ruthless selfishness is portrayed in the individual’s behaviour he meant the morphological behaviour and not the psychological behaviour. Hence, the term “selfish” is unambiguously used for a successful gene.

A morsel of food for thought. Just like genes adapt and organisms evolve, the term “selfish” evolves from the genetic to the organism level. Would it be inchoate to think that there’s something selfish about “selfishness” itself just to have it evolved? ;)