English

The Taylor-Frank method cannot be applied to some biologically important, continuous fitness functions

Populations and Evolution 2012-09-10 v1

Abstract

The Taylor-Frank method for making kin selection models when fitness is a nonlinear function of a continuous phenotype requires this function to be differentiable. This assumption sometimes fails for biologically important fitness functions, for instance in microbial data and the theory of repeated n-person games, even when fitness functions are smooth and continuous. In these cases, the Taylor-Frank methodology cannot be used, and a more general form of direct fitness must replace the standard one to account for kin selection, even under weak selection.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1209.1412,
  title  = {The Taylor-Frank method cannot be applied to some biologically important, continuous fitness functions},
  author = {Roberto H. Schonmann and Robert Boyd and Renato Vicente},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.1412},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

9 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-21T22:01:12.680Z