In the previous passage, the group is assumed to have "lower virulence", i.e., "virulence" is presented as a group trait. One could argue then that the selection is in fact against individual viruses that are too virulent. In this case, however, the fitness of all viruses within a rabbit is affected by what the group does to the rabbit. Indeed, the proper, directly selected group property is that of "not killing the rabbit too early" rather than individual virulence. In situations such as these, we would expect there to be selection for cooperation amongst the viruses in a group in such a way that the group will not "kill the rabbit too early". It is of course true that any group behavior is the result of individual traits, such as individual viruses suppressing the virulence of their neighbours, but the causes of phenotypes are rarely the causes of fitness differences.