Group Selection

Group selection is the theory that natural selection can act at the level of groups of organisms rather than solely on individuals, favoring traits that benefit a group's survival or reproduction even at a cost to the individuals bearing them. The idea was popularized in its classic form by V. C. Wynne-Edwards in 1962, who argued that animals restrain their own reproduction for the good of the group, but the concept came under sustained criticism in the 1960s, notably from George C. Williams, for lacking a plausible mechanism to prevent selfish individuals from outcompeting altruists within the same group. The theory remains a genuinely contested area of evolutionary biology, with more recent multilevel selection models attempting to formalize when selection between groups can outweigh selection within them.