Altruism Can Proliferate through Population Viscosity despite High Random Gene Flow

Schonmann, Roberto H.; Vicente, Renato; Caticha, Nestor

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072043

Cited by 20 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Individuals in each group descend from individuals in their parental group independently with probabilities proportional to f ij . That is, selection is described by a two-level Fisher-Wright framework common in theoretical studies (43). Because each group’s contribution to the next generation depends on its average fitness, this lifecycle corresponds to “hard selection” (44).…”

Section: Models and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective action and the collaborative brain

Gavrilets

2014

Preprint

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Humans are unique both in their cognitive abilities and in the extent of cooperation in large groups of unrelated individuals. How our species evolved high intelligence in spite of various costs of having a large brain is perplexing. Equally puzzling is how our ancestors managed to overcome the collective action problem and evolve strong innate preferences for cooperative behavior. Here I theoretically study the evolution of social-cognitive competencies as driven by selection emerging from the need to produce public goods in games against nature or in direct competition with other groups. I use collaborative ability in collective actions as a proxy for social-cognitive competencies. My results suggest that collaborative ability is more likely to evolve first by between-group conflicts and then later be utilized and improved in games against nature. If collaborative abilities remain low, the species is predicted to become genetically dimorphic with a small proportion of individuals contributing to public goods and the rest free-riding. Evolution of collaborative ability creates conditions for the subsequent evolution of collaborative communication and cultural learning. 1. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under aThe copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/009746 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Oct. 28, 2014; Wednesday 24 th September, 2014 9:06am 2 IntroductionOur species is unique in a great variety of different ways but the most crucial of them are related to the size and complexity of our brain (1-6). Brain size in the genus Homo tripled in the past 2.5 Myr as a result of several punctuated changes supplemented by gradual within-lineage changes in Homo erectus and Homo sapiens (2, 7,8). In modern humans, the brain is very expensive metabolically: it represents about 2% of the body's weight but utilizes approximately 20% of the energy consumed (8,9). Other costs include a need for extended parental care due to a longer growth period, difficulties at giving birth to larger-headed babies, and some mental illnesses that come with brain complexity. A burning question is what factors were responsible for the evolution of human brain size and intelligence despite all these costs.Two sets of explanations have been hotly debated. Ecological explanations include climate variability and harshness, parasites' and predators' pressure, as well as changes in diet, habitat use, and food extraction techniques (10, 11). However the empirical support for the role of ecology in human brain evolution is relatively weak. Neocortex size does not seem to correlate with several indices related to diet and habitat (12). There is a statistically significant association of cranial capacity with climate variability and harshness, and parasite pressure, but these factors are much less important than the population density (7).An alternative set of explanations coming under the rubric of the social brain hypothesis focuses on s...

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Section: Models and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective action and the collaborative brain

Gavrilets

2014

Preprint

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“…This average value has the form 1 þ OðdÞ, and therefore the absolute fitnesses have the form w Ã ðxÞ ¼ w 0 À dc1 A þ dbx þ Oðd 2 Þ, where w 0 is a common value for all individuals in the population in each generation.) In [13], we studied invasion in this setting, under strong or weak selection. In the relevant case for us here, in which groups are large, migration m low and selection is weak, we showed that the condition for invasion to occur is precisely (3.5), with Q ¼ 0 (see display (3.3), [13]).…”

Section: Population Structures: General Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More detail and self-contained derivations that extend the results from [14] (2) Groups compete among themselves for the production of new groups in the next generation. This is the 'budding viscosity' population structure of Gardner & West [17], called 'propagule dispersal with group competition' in [18], and 'two-level Fisher-Wright' (2lFW) in [13]. The idea is that cooperators, at a cost to themselves, help their group in its competition with other groups.…”

Section: The Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

A simple rule for the evolution of contingent cooperation in large groups

Schonmann

Boyd

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 18 to a theme issue 'The evolution of cooperation based on direct fitness benefits'. Humans cooperate in large groups of unrelated individuals, and many authors have argued that such cooperation is sustained by contingent reward and punishment. However, such sanctioning systems can also stabilize a wide range of behaviours, including mutually deleterious behaviours. Moreover, it is very likely that large-scale cooperation is derived in the human lineage. Thus, understanding the evolution of mutually beneficial cooperative behaviour requires knowledge of when strategies that support such behaviour can increase when rare. Here, we derive a simple formula that gives the relatedness necessary for contingent cooperation in n-person iterated games to increase when rare. This rule applies to a wide range of pay-off functions and assumes that the strategies supporting cooperation are based on the presence of a threshold fraction of cooperators. This rule suggests that modest levels of relatedness are sufficient for invasion by strategies that make cooperation contingent on previous cooperation by a small fraction of group members. In contrast, only high levels of relatedness allow the invasion by strategies that require near universal cooperation. In order to derive this formula, we introduce a novel methodology for studying evolution in group structured populations including local and global group-size regulation and fluctuations in group size.

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“…There is evidence that moral behavior is the result of multi-level selection [13,14], but the exact mechanism is still not understood. Although the picture is not yet complete, some of its parts are gradually becoming clearer.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-thermal transitions in a model inspired by moral decisions

Alamino¹

2016

J. Phys. A: Math. Theor.

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This work introduces a model in which agents of a network act upon one another according to three different kinds of moral decisions. These decisions are based on an increasing level of sophistication in the empathy capacity of the agent, a hierarchy which we name Piaget's Ladder.The decision strategy of the agents is non-rational, in the sense that it does not minimize model'sHamiltonian, and the model presents quenched disorder given by the distribution of its defining parameters. We obtain an analytical solution for this model in the thermodynamic limit and also a leading order correction for finite sized systems. Using these results, we show that typical realizations develop a rich phase structure with discontinuous non-thermal transitions.

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Altruism Can Proliferate through Population Viscosity despite High Random Gene Flow

Cited by 20 publications

References 61 publications

Collective action and the collaborative brain

Collective action and the collaborative brain

A simple rule for the evolution of contingent cooperation in large groups

Non-thermal transitions in a model inspired by moral decisions

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