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Capturing the superorganism: a formal theory of group adaptation

GARDNER, A., GRAFEN, A.·2009·Journal of Evolutionary Biology

Abstract

Adaptation is conventionally regarded as occurring at the level of the individual organism. However, in recent years there has been a revival of interest in the possibility for group adaptations and superorganisms. Here, we provide the first formal theory of group adaptation. In particular: (1) we clarify the distinction between group selection and group adaptation, framing the former in terms of gene frequency change and the latter in terms of optimization; (2) we capture the superorganism in the form of a ‘group as maximizing agent’ analogy that links an optimization program to a model of a group‐structured population; (3) we demonstrate that between‐group selection can lead to group adaptation, but only in rather special circumstances; (4) we provide formal support for the view that between‐group selection is the best definition for ‘group selection’; and (5) we reveal that mechanisms of conflict resolution such as policing cannot be regarded as group adaptations.

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Crossref · 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2008.01681.x

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Metadata

Authors
GARDNER, A., & GRAFEN, A.
Venue
Journal of Evolutionary Biology
Published
2009-03-13
Volume
22
Issue
4
Pages
659-671
ISSN
  • 1010-061X (ISSN-L)
  • 1420-9101
OpenAlex
W2121396649
Cited by
362
References
8
FWCI
82.49
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Capturing the superorganism: a formal theory of group adaptation. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2008.01681.x
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GARDNER, A., & GRAFEN, A. (2009). Capturing the superorganism: a formal theory of group adaptation. Journal of Evolutionary Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2008.01681.x

Data sources

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.