Evolutionary drive of homosexuality - Page 9

On November 30 2010 10:25 Masamune wrote:
I'll answer this in a nutshell.

Homosexuality is most likely a form of kin selection. Your inclusive fitness still remains becuse your indirect fitness prospers at the expense of your direct fitness.

The definition of kin selection (from wiki): Kin selection refers to apparent strategies in evolution that favor the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even at a cost to their own survival and/or reproduction. The classic example is a eusocial insect colony, in which sterile females act as workers to assist their mother in the production of additional offspring.

So just like a worker bee will halt it's reproduction to help its closely related kin produce offspring that share a large amount of genes, homosexuality (at least in men; female homosexuality is a little more complicated and unclear) in humans means that a male will be gay in order to help raise his sister's and/or brothers kid's who share a large amount of genes with him as well.

There have been studies showing that the female relatives of homosexual men happen to be more fecund so it's most likely that whatever makes a man gay, makes his female relatives (specifically his sisters and mother, from an altruistic perspective) produce more offspring.

This leads to the "gay uncle" theory, whereby if you have a sister who is pumping out a bunch of kids, then you can still successively pass on your genes by helping to ensure these kids reach adulthood and propagate their genes.

Eusociality in insects has most likely evolved many times, so it's not hard to believe that homosexuality is an alternate mechanism by evolution to pass one's gene's in humans.

And there is a genetic basis for homosexuality, it's just not pinpointed just like there is no pinpoint gene for the variation of intelligence in humans. It's most likely complex and has many factors occurring, including such things as epigenetics, that make it hard to really assess. However, studies have demonstrated that monozygotic twins have a higher concordance for homosexuality than do dizygotic twins, so this is pretty solid evidence for there being a genetic basis to it and not a "choice".

On November 30 2010 10:44 Half wrote:



Yes most intelligent people in this thread are already aware of the gay uncle theory.

Any kind of "hard science" proof besides your intuition based on your cultural perception of gay people.

On November 30 2010 10:32 jmillz wrote:
i discussed the ethics of homosexuality in only one sentence. ill sum it up; religion is anti homosexual because it defies the law of a species survival. take it how u will, but thats bio 101

On November 30 2010 08:42 L wrote:
The evolutionary drive towards homosexuality is incredibly clear on a genetic level. Past looking statistics show that for the majority of human life, 80% of women pass on their genes, whereas only 40% of men pass on theirs. The resulting glut of young, socially constrained males normally leads to increases in intra-species violence and fighting as a result. Subsequently, forces which reduce and pacify lower level males become a net benefit at the group level as members of the society are removed from the competition to become sexually successful, much like menopause does.

Grandmother effect, in essence.