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  • Brief Communications Arising
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Questioning evidence of group selection in spiders

Nature volume 524, pages E1–E3 (2015)Cite this article

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arising from J. N. Pruitt & C. J. Goodnight Nature 514, 359–362 (2014); doi:10.1038/nature13811

Any field study showing convincing evidence of group selection would be a significant contribution to the field of evolutionary biology. Pruitt and Goodnight1 claim to provide such evidence in a 14–18-month field experiment on spiders. However, we contend that apparent flaws in their predictions, assumptions, methods and interpretations undermine this claim. We believe that the data presented are unreliable and are equally consistent with both group selection and individual-level selection; thus, we question the conclusion of Pruitt and Goodnight1 that group selection has produced the observed patterns. There is a Reply to this Brief Communication Arising by Pruitt, J. N. & Goodnight, C. J. Nature 524, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14597 (2015).

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Figure 1: Overview of methods and results from Pruitt and Goodnight1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, John Maynard Smith Building, Brighton, BN1 9QG, UK

    Lena Grinsted & James D. J. Gilbert

  2. Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 116, building 1540, Aarhus C, 8000, Denmark

    Trine Bilde

  3. School of Biological, Biomedical and Environmental Sciences, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK

    James D. J. Gilbert

Authors
  1. Lena Grinsted
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  2. Trine Bilde
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  3. James D. J. Gilbert
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Contributions

L.G., J.D.J.G. and T.B. authored this paper; L.G. performed statistical analyses.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lena Grinsted.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Grinsted, L., Bilde, T. & Gilbert, J. Questioning evidence of group selection in spiders. Nature 524, E1–E3 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14595

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