Summary: The Green Beard Effect

The genetic concept of evolution proposes that natural selection will promote the frequency of genes whose phenotypic effects allow success in replication. A gene for altruism can be chosen by selection if the altruism is generally directed at other people who share identical genes. A green-beard effect arises when a gene, or linked genes, produce three identifiable phenotypic effects: an observable trait, the hypothetical "green beard", recognition of this trait in others; and favored treatment to those recognized. This gene, in retrospect, is directly identifying copies of itself, irrespective of usual relatedness. Kin selection chooses alleles to spread by encouraging altruism towards those projected to be carrying the same allele.

Green-beard altruism could increase the presence of green-beard phenotypes in a population even if genes are assisting other genes that are not exact copies of themselves in a molecular sense; all that is required is that they produce the three phenotypic characteristics described

If you take into account a gene that has two pleiotropic effects that outwardly have nothing to do with each other, if one of its effects is to give individual a label, such as the Green Beard, and the other is to give somebody a bias to act altruistically towards individuals so called (that is, Green-Bearded individuals), then hypothetically that gene will propagate. The Green Beard Effect is a process in which a potentially selective altruistic gene can recognize copies of itself in other genes. That means that the gene can spread itself by looking after copies of itself when able. That 's a relatively simple way to understand. Green Beards, as far as I am able to comprehend, don 't exist. But kinship is a type of statistical Green Beard. Despite a person’s brother not being guaranteed to contain the gene that 's making a sibling practice "fraternal" behavior towards another, the odds that he has that gene are statistically higher than the odds of a stranger in a population. In retrospect, the "Green beard" is a ambiguous name as it has led scientists to look for clear signals, but I have found the effects are much more likely to be elusive and gathers evidence from other kinds of recognition systems. Evolutionary scientists, for the most part, believed that green beard effects would be rare because generally they are not seen as