Pierrick Bourrat’s new paper in Philosophy and Theory in Biology criticizes aspects of the influential ‘export of fitness’ framework developed by Rick Michod and colleagues and extended by Samir Okasha (Bourrat, P. 2015. Levels, time and fitness in evolutionary transitions in individuality. Philos. Theory Biol., 7: e601. doi: 10.3998/ptb.6959004.0007.001). According to this view, an evolutionary transition in individuality, for example from unicellular to multicellular life, involves a transfer of fitness from the lower level units (e.g. cells) to the higher level unit (e.g. nascent multicellular organism). Fitness is defined as the product of viability and fecundity, and the emergence of a division of labor between reproductive (germ) and non-reproductive (somatic) units at the lower level exports fitness to the higher level. Full disclosure: Rick Michod was my Ph.D. co-advisor, and he has had a huge influence on my thinking about this topic.