“if mice were to evolve the ability to fly and migrate for the winter, they would probably form a single reproductive population, and would evolve to extinction as the segregation-distorter evolved to fixation.”
Doesn’t this count as a case of group level selection? If you are correct in this supposition the populations where this allele becomes established are quickly wiped out. Presumably, since mice are ubiquitous, such populations are generally re-seeded by mice from other populations after an evolutionarily short time. Even if mis-segregation allele occurs fairly frequently and benefits from a fitness advantage any randomly chosen mouse in the world will not usually possess it. I’m sure that there are ways to define “group selection” so that this doesn’t count, but I’d like to know what definition is being proposed before hand. Certainly this is a case of an equilibrium where a selectively favored allele generally doesn’t exist because the populations in which it does exist die out. How does this differ from the case of viruses?
“if mice were to evolve the ability to fly and migrate for the winter, they would probably form a single reproductive population, and would evolve to extinction as the segregation-distorter evolved to fixation.”
Doesn’t this count as a case of group level selection? If you are correct in this supposition the populations where this allele becomes established are quickly wiped out. Presumably, since mice are ubiquitous, such populations are generally re-seeded by mice from other populations after an evolutionarily short time. Even if mis-segregation allele occurs fairly frequently and benefits from a fitness advantage any randomly chosen mouse in the world will not usually possess it. I’m sure that there are ways to define “group selection” so that this doesn’t count, but I’d like to know what definition is being proposed before hand. Certainly this is a case of an equilibrium where a selectively favored allele generally doesn’t exist because the populations in which it does exist die out. How does this differ from the case of viruses?