Two points on transition of individuality

A group of individuals can obtain some individuality if they as a whole have a uniform interest both in energy use and in reproduction. This phenomenon is termed Transition of Individuality to upper levels of organisms. Examples include the existence of multi-cellular organisms, where the individuality transits from single cells to a group of cells. I just learned this term from Hochberg et al. (2008) and Rainey & Kerr (2010). Their works gave me some hints on what I am thinking of, i.e. how to model multiple level conflict and cooperation in life systems.

Here I can only make two points from my own opinion.

1) As proposed by Rainey and others, the key difficulty of individuality transition is the conflict between the interest of each individual (the lower level) and that of the group (the higher level). In fact, there are limited known types of such conflict, like commons' tragedy and anti-commons' tragedy. Why not begin with the very simple types of conflict and think about how they can be overcome?

2) The grouped upper-level unit does NOT have to show greater fitness than the free living lower-level units in order to make happen the individuality transition. It need ONLY to obtain any kind of resistance to the lower-level betrayers to be self-maintained. The measuring and comparison of fitness may be a wrong focus.