Multilevel selection

Multilevel selection is the position that natural selection acts simultaneously on multiple levels of biological organization — genes, cells, organisms, groups — and that an adaptation at a given level requires selection at that level.

The framework

The Price equation partitions evolutionary change into a between-groups component and a within-groups component, which makes “group selection” a matter of accounting rather than a separate force: a trait can increase because groups with more of it leave more groups, even when individuals with the trait do worse within their group. David Sloan Wilson developed trait-group models in the 1970s showing that selection among small, ephemeral