Lineage selection occurs when the frequency of one biological lineage changes relative to another lineage. Lineage selection is a generalization of individual based natural selection; the stating that an allele is favored by natural selection is equivalent to stating that the lineage bearing the allele is favored by natural selection.^[1] For alleles with simple positive or negative fitness effects, lineage and individual based selection are equivalent. However, lineage selection can accommodate a wider array of evolutionary phenomena, such as the adaptive evolution of evolvability, altruism, and recombination.^[2][1][3] Additionally, lineage selection is useful in determining the effects of mutations in highly structured environments such as tumors.^[4]

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