THE RED QUEEN (MacMillan, 1994)
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(Copyright © 2000 Piero Scaruffi | Legal restrictions - Termini d'uso )
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The British biologist Matt Ridley, following in the footsteps of William Hamilton, thinks that cooperation helps evolution.
Evolution is accelerated even by parasites.
Life can be viewed as a symbiotic process which necessitates of competitors.
In a sense, co-evolving parasites help improve evolution.
The emphasis in evolution has traditionally been on competition,
not cooperation, although it is through cooperation, not competition,
that considerable jumps in behavior can be attained.
Sexuality itself evolved for evolutionary purposes. Organisms adopted sexual reproduction in order to cope with invasions of parasites. Parasites have a harder time adapting to the diversity generated by sexual reproduction, whereas they would have devastating effects if all individuals of a species were identical. |
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