In evolutionary biology, group selection refers to the idea that alleles can become fixed or spread in a population because of the benefits they bestow on groups, regardless of the alleles' effect on the fitness of individuals within that group.

Group selection was used as a popular explanation for adaptations, especially by V. C. Wynne-Edwards. For several decades, however, critiques, particularly by George C. Williams,John Maynard Smith and C.M. Perrins (1964), cast serious doubt on group selection as a major mechanism of evolution, and though some scientists have pursued the idea over the last few decades, only recently have group selection models seen a resurgence.

Specific syndromes of selective factors can create situations where groups are selected because they display group properties that are selected-for. Some mosquito-transmitted rabbit viruses, for instance, are only transmitted to uninfected rabbits from infected rabbits that are still alive. This creates a selective pressure on every group of viruses already infecting a rabbit not to become too virulent and kill their host rabbit before enough mosquitoes have bitten it. In natural systems such viruses display much lower virulence levels than do mutants of the same viruses that in laboratory culture readily out-compete non-virulent variants (or than do tick-transmitted viruses—ticks, unlike mosquitoes, bite dead rabbits).

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941), known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.

Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982 he introduced an influential concept into evolutionary biology, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms.

Dawkins is an atheist, a vice president of the British Humanist Association, and a supporter of the Brights movement. He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—"a fixed false belief." As of January 2010 the English-language version has sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages.