> some biologists still get really triggered about group selection and deny its evolutionary importance
Which is dishonest at best. The vast majority of biologist have realized group selection doesn’t work as proposed. [0]
What people thought was group selection was just kin selection working over time.
All evolution works at the level of the gene. Genes “want” to reproduce more of themselves. And if the same gene is in a kin, then it can favor enhancing the survival of kin that carry copies of itself. At a macro level this can be misreported as group selection, but to be sure, the selection is happening at the level of the gene, and reaches at most to kin sharing genes.
The article then goes on to say
> The nice story I told above about the evolution of altruism could just have easily been applied to humans. Yet we do not exist in eusocial colonies, so there must be something else going on
And he then talks about gene selection and the fact that bees are haplodiploidy, which is indeed the cause of the “altruism” we see.
His dismissal of haplodiploidy at the end of the article is a weak argument. Just because haplodiploidy in other species doesn’t lead to eusocial groups, or that eusocial groups can occur without haplodiploidy are not sufficient arguments that dismiss the effects of haplodiploidy and kin selection favoring altruism in eusocial bees.
I highly recommend people interested in these topics to read the seminal Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. [1]
0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection#Criticism