Empirical Implications

Abstract

The initial success of the gene’s-eye view came from making sense of old problems in evolutionary biology, in particular those related to social behaviour. It also stimulated new empirical research areas. This chapter is about three such new areas. The first is extended phenotypes, which are examples of phenotypic effects that occur outside of the body in which a gene is located. The second area is greenbeard genes, which gets its name from the thought-experiment devised to show that for altruism to evolve it is the relatedness between the actor and the recipient at the locus underlying the altruistic behaviour that matters, not the genome-wide relatedness. Finally, selfish genetic elements are genetic elements that have the ability to promote their own transmission even if it come at the expense of the fitness of the individual organism. The chapter outlines the current understanding of these topics and the role of the gene’s-eye view in uncovering them.