From Malcolm Shute
Lynn Dicks is right to look for an evolutionary advantage to a mechanism that
seems to encourage inbreeding. But she is not necessarily right to assume (as
she seems to) that there must be one.
It could be that inbreeding is always worse for us, but that there is another
mechanism at work, giving us some other genetic advantage that just happens to
have the side effect of dampening our drive for outbreeding. It could be, for
instance, that the mechanism is primarily there to promote bonding between
parents and offspring, and thereby boost the numbers of offspring surviving to
create the next generation.
La Tour d'Aigues, France
