The Gaia theory of Lovelock has had a very unequal treatment by conventional ecologists, ranging from being ignored to qualified support. I suggest that the phenomena described by Gaia are really capable of explanation by conventional ecological ideas using a gene/individual unit of selection. This is analogous to the situation in ecology during the 1960's when many apparent 'for the good of the species' adaptations were explained at lower levels of selection.
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David M. Wilkinson (1999) studied this question.