Our review's key conclusion is that empirical evidence for multilevel selection is abundant, refuting the misconception that MLS lacks empirical support. Rather than being rare or marginal, MLS appears frequently across biological systems and hierarchical levels. MLS is a useful conceptual and analytical framework for understanding trait evolution and natural selection overall.
Many evolutionary phenomena, including the origin of multicellularity, social behavior, cooperation, and cultural evolution in humans, are more clearly interpreted when MLS perspectives are applied.
Historically, debates about the "unit of selection" have been hindered by conceptual misunderstandings; this review suggests that focusing on empirical data could advance the field.
If the forces of natural selection, diversification specifically, can operate on many levels then it is reasonable to ask, should we not understand collapse and extinction from the same multidimensional perspective?
Extinction I am left to wonder, may be precisely describable in evolutionary terms in abstracted contexts such as culture and language in a way that shares the same basic apparatus of analysis as the study of the extinction of species and ecosystems.
I also look over at the processes of cancer and think hmmm.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2026.1752597/full