What is wrong with absolute individual fitness

One of the most basic facts about evolution is that fit-ness is a relative concept. It does not matter how well an organism survives and reproduces, only that it does so better than other organisms bearing alternative traits. Nevertheless, many evolutionary arguments are framed in terms of absolute individual fitness. The absolute fitness criterion (AFC) can be justified in terms of relative fitness only given certain assumptions that are frequently violated in nature. In particular, inter-actions must occur in groups that are randomly formed and phenotypic variation among groups must be tightly coupled to genetic variation. Complicating the geno-type–phenotype relationship can cause phenotypic vari-ation among groups to become nonrandom, even when the groups are randomly formed, favoring traits tha