Coalitions: The Prosthetic Adaptation?

• Psychological Adaptations: A Model and It's Relevance by James Brody, 4/24/97
  
  

Chimps appear to show variability in their Psychological Adaptations (PAs). De Waal (1996, Good Natured, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press) describes chimp teams composed of a catcher, beater, stalker that work together to catch a colobus monkey. All three share the meat after applying their different skills. There is no team meeting, no drawing of straws for the different roles. Each guy seems to do the thing that he does best. The coalition seems to work for the individual survival of all three animals.

People also seem to vary in their abilities (PAs) to take directions, cook, care for children, mate, treat wounds, build, care for plants, manage social groups, recognize feelings, etc. They also have and need coalitions, a solution for PA variability. The member who is weak with hunting skills may have other strengths and be fed by others in return. Likewise, someone who dislikes her children may swap out some of the childcare in return for superior food gathering.

The ability to form alliances and coalitions, to track reciprocal altruistic bargains, could be a prosthesis or compensation for weaknesses in any number of other skills. A corollary may be that the weakest member of a group is the one who can't handle coalitions, neither joining nor leading them. He is truly at a fitness disadvantage if he has no other talents (PAs) to get him adopted into a group.

Coalitions can mean greater cooperation and less competition within a group. Because of exchanges between members, cooperation paradoxically, rather than competition, may "allow" diversity even if not driving it.(1) Differences between people give them something to exchange. Natural Selection is generally recognized as a conservative force (from Darwin through George Williams) that discourages variability. Most changes in a finely tuned adaptation should result in lowered survival. But Natural Selection's effects on individual differences could be held in abeyance by coalitions. Thus, coalitions may produce some survival advantage and Natural Selection will result in more members, in successive generations, who can use coalitions.

When competitive pressures increase, as may occur with population growth, there is sometimes a breakdown in coalitions if the adaptations for getting food overwhelm those for getting along.(2) Increased population might result in a phase of less phenotypic variability should any one pattern of traits have a survival advantage.(3) If there are alternative niches available, then heightened selection pressure may also encourage more diversity within a group and increase survival potential & reproduction of all members even if new species are not created.

NOTES:

1) The more common relationship is thought to be that of competition driving diversity.

2) With some exceptions. Female chimpanzees have been noted to interfere with male fights under crowded conditions.

3) There is still no agreement on the conditions or mechanisms that allow formation of new species. There are hints that even Darwin was troubled by Natural Selection as a mechanism for speciation. It could be that there are "speciation events" such as meteor crashes that apply severe deprivation which could increase the rate of mutations. Natural Selection would quickly weed the winners and losers. Unfortunately, no one has ever observed this effect of deprivation on mutation rate aside possibly in bacteria. Whatever the mechanism(s), it has to affect males and females in the same way and at the same time if you define species on the basis of the ability to reproduce within a group but not outside of it. Lynn Margulis (or someone she knows) will probably figure it out. Symbiosis rather than "mutation" may be a useful lead. More later.

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