possibly the winner for best Nature/Science paper title this year...

from the title itself, i couldn't tell if this was some unknown realm of quantum chromodynamics or an anthropological study of a race of rainbow people. an important question - whether non-kin-based altruism can evolve. although it always seemed like language what was missing from many a model of altruism evolution, because it can create and spread knowledge of the kinds of 'tags' discussed in the abstract below. makes you wonder, though, about how many papers are framed in an idea that came from the bar. "eh! what about 'beard chromodynamics'!" (highlighting mine)

also - a quick note on a really cool study done on chinese frogs. "Ultrasonic communication in frogs" - Nature, 3/23. Basically, only bats, rats, and sea mammals were known to communicate ultrasonically. researchers recorded communications in an amphibian, the concave-eared torrent frog. the frequencies making up male calls spread into the ultrasonic, and when these parts of the call are played back, they reply. so - hearing and sound production have evolved together, presumably separate from the evolution of ultrasonic capacities in other animals. the neat (well, i think) explanation of why this would happen is simply because the frogs live near torrential streams with dominant low-frequency sounds. they evolved to be heard above the roar. it's stuff like this that highlights how fantastic natural selection can be . . .

ok, beards!..

Altruism through beard chromodynamics

Vincent A. A. Jansen and Minus van Baalen

The evolution of altruism, a behaviour that benefits others at one's own fitness expense, poses a darwinian paradox. The paradox is resolved if many interactions are with related individuals so that the benefits of altruism are reaped by copies of the altruistic gene in other individuals, a mechanism called kin selection. However, recognition of altruists could provide an alternative route towards the evolution of altruism. Arguably the simplest recognition system is a conspicuous, heritable tag, such as a green beard. Despite the fact that such genes have been reported, the 'green beard effect' has often been dismissed because it is unlikely that a single gene can code for altruism and a recognizable tag. Here we model the green beard effect and find that if recognition and altruism are always inherited together, the dynamics are highly unstable, leading to the loss of altruism. In contrast, if the effect is caused by loosely coupled separate genes, altruism is facilitated through beard chromodynamics in which many beard colours co-occur. This allows altruism to persist even in weakly structured populations and implies that the green beard effect, in the form of a fluid association of altruistic traits with a recognition tag, can be much more prevalent than hitherto assumed.

from the title itself, i couldn't tell if this was some unknown realm of quantum chromodynamics or an anthropological study of a race of rainbow people. an important question - whether non-kin-based altruism can evolve. although it always seemed like language what was missing from many a model of altruism evolution, because it can create and spread knowledge of the kinds of 'tags' discussed in the abstract below. makes you wonder, though, about how many papers are framed in an idea that came from the bar. "eh! what about 'beard chromodynamics'!" (highlighting mine)