Yellow-bellied marmots live in colonies with a single dominant maleMaria Janicki/Alamy
Friendly groups of marmots could help settle an enduring debate in evolution – whether the characteristics of a group can be more important to an individual’s chances of survival than the characteristics of that individual. An analysis of their behaviour is the first evidence in wild animals for this evolutionary idea, known as multilevel selection
“What we found is that the group traits are under just as strong selection as the individual traits, if not slightly stronger,” says Conner Philson at the University of California, Los Angeles.…