  Three steps aid in the analysis of selection. First, describe phenotypes by
their component causes. Components include genes, maternal effects, symbionts,
and any other predictors of phenotype that are of interest. Second, describe
fitness by its component causes, such as an individual's phenotype, its
neighbors' phenotypes, resource availability, and so on. Third, put the
predictors of phenotype and fitness into an exact equation for evolutionary
change, providing a complete expression of selection and other evolutionary
processes. The complete expression separates the distinct causal roles of the
various hypothesized components of phenotypes and fitness. Traditionally, those
components are given by the covariance, variance, and regression terms of
evolutionary models. I show how to interpret those statistical expressions with
respect to information theory. The resulting interpretation allows one to read
the fundamental equations of selection and evolution as sentences that express
how various causes lead to the accumulation of information by selection and the
decay of information by other evolutionary processes. The interpretation in
terms of information leads to a deeper understanding of selection and
heritability, and a clearer sense of how to formulate causal hypotheses about
evolutionary process. Kin selection appears as a particular type of causal
analysis that partitions social effects into meaningful components.
