. . . .The members of the colony or society (such as humans) can show senescence instead. An ordinary tree like a pine or an oak, is not a colony, but it is not a single organism I quite the way a human being is, either. In some ways, it is in between those two cases. A tree grows by the multiplication of small units -- branching systems -- that can each reproduce on their own and, it cut and transplanted, can give rise to another tree. Anything that grows and develops through the multiplication of units that can reproduce in this way is exempt from Medawar-Williams arguments*. {*Medawar and George C. Williams, who realized that aging does not evolve for the "good of the species". Instead, they argued, aging evolves because natural selection becomes inefficient at maintaining function (and fitness) at old age.) Excerpt: “Other Minds”
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Dinesh said: