Chapter 10: Evolution of Co-operation

A fundamental question about all forms of collective animal behaviour is how they evolved. Throughout this book I have turned to arguments based on individuals adopting or evolving behaviours that increase their own fitness to explain or make predictions about group behaviour. The theory of natural selection is grounded in the idea that those individuals exhibiting a behaviour that provides them with higher than average fitness pass their genotype, and thus their particular behaviour, on to future generations. It is this idea that provides the basic assumption of evolutionary game theory models: those individuals adopting a strategy that provides them with higher than average fitness will increase in the population, while those with lower than average fitness will decrease. This chapter attempts to provide a broad classification of the vast majority of collective behaviours discussed in this book as arising from a combination of four distinct forms of co-operation (parasitism, mutualism, synergy and repeated interactions) and altruism as a result of inclusive fitness.

Key ideas: evolutionary game theory; social parasitism; continuous strategy games; adaptive dynamics; evolutionary branching; mutualisms; balance of power; synergisms; more than the sum of its parts; repeated interactions; inclusive fitness; Hamilton's rule; family groups and spatially structured populations; unifying ideas in evolution

Links
Tim Clutton-Brock's homepage

Alan Grafen's homepage

Laurent Lehmann's homepage

Stuart West's homepage

References

Clutton-Brock, T. 2002 Breeding together: Kin selection and Mutualism in Cooperative Vertebrates. Science 296, 69-72.

Dawkins, R. 1976 The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Grafen, A. 1984 Natural selection, kin selection and group selection. In Behavioural Ecology. An Evolutionary Approach (ed. J. R. Krebs & N. B. Davies). Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.

Lehmann, L. & Keller, L. 2006a The evolution of cooperation and altruism - a general framework and a classification of models. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 19, 1365-1376.

Lehmann, L. & Keller, L. 2006b Synergy, partner choice and frequency dependence: their integration into inclusive fitness theory and their interpretation in terms of direct and indirect fitness effects. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 19, 1426-1436.

Maynard Smith, J. 1982 Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Maynard Smith, J. & Szathmáry, E. 1995 The Major Transitions of Evolution: W.H. Freeman Spektrum.

Nowak, M. A. & May, R. M. 1992 Evolutionary Games And Spatial Chaos. Nature 359, 826-829.

Rousset, F. 2004 Genetic structure and selection in subdivided populations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Link

West, S. A., Gardner, A. & Griffin, A. S. 2006 Altruism. Current Biology 16, R482-R483.

Taylor, P. D. 1992a Altruism in Viscous Populations - an Inclusive Fitness Model. Evolutionary Ecology 6, 352-356.

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