Evolution of cooperation by generalized reciprocity

Pfeiffer, Thomas; Rutte, Claudia; Killingback, Timothy; Taborsky, Michael; Bonhoeffer, Sebastian

doi:10.1098/rspb.2004.2988

Cited by 192 publications

(177 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Consequently, despite the birds having made some errors or cheated occasionally, their propensity to forgive allowed mutual cooperation to be easily re-established in this treatment. Thus, our study demonstrates that animals can adjust their behavioural decisions not only to the identity of the partner they interact with, but also to their past experience, and suggests that reciprocal altruism might be more common among non-human animals than originally thought (Hammerstein 2002;Stevens & Hauser 2004; but see Pfeiffer et al 2005;Krams et al 2008). To date, however, the importance of reciprocity has probably been underestimated to the detriment of simpler mechanisms, because most controlled experiments that have failed to find cooperation imposed unrealistic constraints.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-term social bonds promote cooperation in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma

2009

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Reciprocal altruism, one of the most probable explanations for cooperation among non-kin, has been modelled as a Prisoner's Dilemma. According to this game, cooperation could evolve when individuals, who expect to play again, use conditional strategies like tit-for-tat or Pavlov. There is evidence that humans use such strategies to achieve mutual cooperation, but most controlled experiments with nonhuman animals have failed to find cooperation. One reason for this could be that subjects fail to cooperate because they behave as if they were to play only once. To assess this hypothesis, we conducted an experiment with monogamous zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) that were tested in a two-choice apparatus, with either their social partner or an experimental opponent of the opposite sex. We found that zebra finches maintained high levels of cooperation in an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game only when interacting with their social partner. Although other mechanisms may have contributed to the observed difference between the two treatments, our results support the hypothesis that animals do not systematically give in to the short-term temptation of cheating when long-term benefits exist. Thus, our findings contradict the commonly accepted idea that reciprocal altruism will be rare in non-human animals.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-term social bonds promote cooperation in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma

2009

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“…Models of the repeated Prisoner's Dilemma have shown that the strategies most likely to lead to stable cooperation are those in which individuals copy the previous behaviour of their partners, cooperating when they do and ceasing to cooperate if their partners defect ('tit-for-tat'), especially if cooperative players occasionally forgive defectors ('generous' tit-for-tat [7]). Recent models have extended the original two-partner dyad to encompass larger cooperative networks, considering situations in which many individuals can repeatedly interact to trade commodities under conditions that are less restrictive and more socially complex than those envisioned by original solutions of the Prisoner's Dilemma game [104]. Several rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org Phil.…”

Section: (B) Reproduction By Subordinatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cheating and punishment in cooperative animal societies

Riehl

Frederickson

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Cheaters—genotypes that gain a selective advantage by taking the benefits of the social contributions of others while avoiding the costs of cooperating—are thought to pose a major threat to the evolutionary stability of cooperative societies. In order for cheaters to undermine cooperation, cheating must be an adaptive strategy: cheaters must have higher fitness than cooperators, and their behaviour must reduce the fitness of their cooperative partners. It is frequently suggested that cheating is not adaptive because cooperators have evolved mechanisms to punish these behaviours, thereby reducing the fitness of selfish individuals. However, a simpler hypothesis is that such societies arise precisely because cooperative strategies have been favoured over selfish ones—hence, behaviours that have been interpreted as ‘cheating’ may not actually result in increased fitness, even when they go unpunished. Here, we review the empirical evidence for cheating behaviours in animal societies, including cooperatively breeding vertebrates and social insects, and we ask whether such behaviours are primarily limited by punishment. Our review suggests that both cheating and punishment are probably rarer than often supposed. Uncooperative individuals typically have lower, not higher, fitness than cooperators; and when evidence suggests that cheating may be adaptive, it is often limited by frequency-dependent selection rather than by punishment. When apparently punitive behaviours do occur, it remains an open question whether they evolved in order to limit cheating, or whether they arose before the evolution of cooperation.

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“…Generalized reciprocity results when B helps C because A helped B independently of the identity of individuals (Hamilton and Taborsky, 2005a;Pfeiffer et al, 2005;Rutte and Taborsky, 2007). There is evidence for generalized reciprocity in humans (Yamagishi and Cook, 1993) and rats (Rutte and Taborsky, 2007).…”

Section: Generalized Reciprocitymentioning

confidence: 99%

On the further integration of cooperative breeding and cooperation theory

Bergmüller

Russell

Johnstone

et al. 2007

Behavioural Processes

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We present a synopsis about the commentaries to the target article "Integrating cooperative breeding into theoretical concepts of cooperation", in which we attempted to integrate general mechanisms to explain cooperative behaviour among unrelated individuals with classic concepts to explain helping behaviour in cooperative breeders that do not invoke kin-based benefits. Here we (1) summarize the positions of the commentators concerning the main issues we raised in the target article and discuss important criticisms and extensions. (2) We relate our target article to some recent reviews on the evolution of cooperation and, (3) clarify how we use terminology with regard to cooperation and cooperative behaviour. (4) We discuss several aspects that were raised with respect to cooperative interactions including by-product mutualism, generalised reciprocity and multi-level selection and, (5) examine the alternatives to our classification scheme as proposed by some commentaries. (6) Finally, we highlight several aspects that might hinder the application of game theoretical mechanisms of cooperation in cooperatively breeding systems. Although there is broad agreement that cooperative breeding theory should be integrated within the more general concepts of cooperation, there is some debate about how this may be achieved. We conclude that the contributions in this special issue provide a fruitful first step and ample suggestions for future directions with regard to a more unified framework of cooperation in cooperative breeders.

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Evolution of cooperation by generalized reciprocity

Cited by 192 publications

References 22 publications

Long-term social bonds promote cooperation in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma

Long-term social bonds promote cooperation in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma

Cheating and punishment in cooperative animal societies

On the further integration of cooperative breeding and cooperation theory

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