Parent-Offspring Conflict.

TRIVERS, Robert L.

$750.00

Item Number: 136287

Cambridge, Massachusetts: American Zoology, 1974.

First appearance of Trivers’ extremely influential paper, building on his study of parental investment. Octavo, disbound from the original journal. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front panel, “For Jeffrey w/ best wishes, as always. Bob. June 29, 1974.” The recipient, Jeffrey A. Kurland, was a distinguished professor of biological anthropology and evolution at Penn State. In fine condition. Rare.

"POC" is used to describe the evolutionary conflict arising from differences in optimal parental investment (PI) in an offspring from the standpoint of the parent and the offspring. PI is any investment by the parent in an individual offspring that decreases the parent's ability to invest in other offspring, while the selected offspring's chance of surviving increases. POC occurs in sexually reproducing species and is based on a genetic conflict: Parents are equally related to each of their offspring and are therefore expected to equalize their investment among them. Offspring are only half or less related to their siblings (and fully related to themselves), so they try to get more PI than the parents intended to provide even at their siblings' disadvantage. However, POC is limited by the close genetic relationship between parent and offspring: If an offspring obtains additional PI at the expense of its siblings, it decreases the number of its surviving siblings. Therefore, any gene in an offspring that leads to additional PI decreases (to some extent) the number of surviving copies of itself that may be located in siblings.