Robert Trivers pointed it out in 1972 that we realized that so much of behavioral biology is powerfully explained by organisms competing to acquire, control, direct, or interfere with this critically important resource: parental investment.

Richard Dawkins was fond of citing Robert Trivers who contributed a Forward to the first edition of ‘The Selfish Gene’, which I once owned it being ‘borrowed’ by my children and then went around their friends. The same fate befell subsequent editions over time, I now have the ’30th Anniversary Edition’ which once again contains that forward by the remarkable Trivers.

Robert Trivers crops up in a number of Dawkins’ books including ‘Climbing Mount Improbable’ my favourite but it is a tough call but it wins for the absorbing chapter ‘A Garden Inclosed’ one has to be absolutely alert and concentrating to follow the twists in a fascinating story of wasps and figs.

Dawkins has much to say in his books about not only parental involvement but the involvement of other close kin, siblings of the parents.

In Dawkins’ ‘Brief Candle in the Dark: More Reflections on a Life in Science’ (recommended reading BTW along with ‘An Appetite for Wonder’) we find this passage pages 337-338 paperback:

I’m grateful to that inspired pioneer Robert Trivers for calling my attention to a fascinating paper by Paul and Holly Ewald on a Darwinian approach to cancer which makes use of the idea of the extended phenotype. It is well understood that the cells within a tumour are subject to natural selection within the tumour. But it’s time-limited rather than open-ended natural selection: mutant cells that become ‘better’ (better at being cancerous, emphatically not better for the patient) outcompete less malignant cells within the tumour, becoming more numerous in the tumour. But that evolutionary process terminates with the death of the patient. And there exists a parallel, but more long-term (because transgenerational) selection of genes in the rest of the body, to resist cancers, erect barriers against them, develop immunological tricks against them and so on. It’s an asymmetric arms race, because the anti- cancer tricks have been honed against cancers of many past generations. The tricks of the tumours themselves have to be evolved afresh in each generation, for they begin their malign evolution anew in each body, starting as normal, healthy cells which then are naturally selected to evolve, step by step, the qualities needed to outcompete other cancer cells in the race to multiply.

Online:

https://archive.org/stream/BriefCandleInTheDarkMyLifeInScienceRich/Brief_Candle_in_the_Dark_My_Life_in_Science_-_Rich_djvu.txt