Behavioral Responses in Structured Populations Pave the Way to Group Optimality

Akçay, Erol; Cleve, Jeremy Van

doi:10.1086/663691

Cited by 76 publications

(197 citation statements)

References 68 publications

(88 reference statements)

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“…Akçay & Simms [29] showed in the legume-rhizobium mutualism that both directed feedback (as produced by a negotiation process) and undirected ones are needed to maintain cooperation in rhizobia. Similarly, Van Cleve & Akçay [30] showed that phenotypic feedback and population structure within and between species reinforce each other's effect, consistent with results from within-species social evolution theory [7,31,32]. Here, I focus on three major types of fitness feedback in the context of mutualistic symbioses: partner choice, population structure and different kinds of phenotypic feedback from the host.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 55%

Population structure reduces benefits from partner choice in mutualistic symbiosis

Akçay

2017

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Mutualistic symbioses are key drivers of evolutionary and ecological processes. Understanding how different species can evolve to interact in mutually beneficial ways is an important goal of evolutionary theory, especially when the benefits require costly investments by the partners. For such costly investments to evolve, some sort of fitness feedback mechanism must exist that more than recoups the direct costs. Several such feedback mechanisms have been explored both theoretically and empirically, yet we know relatively little of how they might act together, as they probably do in nature. In this paper, I model the joint action of three of the main mechanisms that can maintain interspecific cooperation in symbioses: partner choice by hosts, population structure amongst symbionts and undirected rewards from hosts to symbionts. The model shows that population structure reduces the benefit from partner choice to hosts. It may help or hinder beneficial symbionts and create positive or negative frequency dependence depending on the nature of host rewards to the symbiont. Strong population structure also makes it less likely that host choosiness and symbiont cooperation will be jointly maintained in a population. The intuition behind these results is that all else being equal, population structure reduces local variation available to the host to choose from. Thus, population structure is not always beneficial for the evolution of cooperation between species. These results also underscore the need to do full analyses of multiple mechanisms of social evolution to uncover the interactions between them.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 55%

Population structure reduces benefits from partner choice in mutualistic symbiosis

Akçay

2017

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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“…Those who gain more from such investment will then invest more, whereas those who gain less will invest less and free-ride to a greater extent on the efforts of others, but all are nevertheless still indifferent to the distribution of resources. There has been much discussion recently in the biological literature of transitions between levels of selection, with models exploring the circumstances under which selection might come to favour traits and behaviours that maximize group rather than individual fitness [9,14]. A frequent assumption in these discussions is that the same processes that favour cooperation in one behavioural context will favour cooperation in all.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cooperation and the common good

Johnstone

Rodrigues

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'. In this paper, we draw the attention of biologists to a result from the economic literature, which suggests that when individuals are engaged in a communal activity of benefit to all, selection may favour cooperative sharing of resources even among non-relatives. Provided that group members all invest some resources in the public good, they should refrain from conflict over the division of these resources. The reason is that, given diminishing returns on investment in public and private goods, claiming (or ceding) a greater share of total resources only leads to the actor (or its competitors) investing more in the public good, such that the marginal costs and benefits of investment remain in balance. This cancels out any individual benefits of resource competition. We illustrate how this idea may be applied in the context of biparental care, using a sequential game in which parents first compete with one another over resources, and then choose how to allocate the resources they each obtain to care of their joint young ( public good) versus their own survival and future reproductive success ( private good). We show that when the two parents both invest in care to some extent, they should refrain from any conflict over the division of resources. The same effect can also support asymmetric outcomes in which one parent competes for resources and invests in care, whereas the other does not invest but refrains from competition. The fact that the caring parent gains higher fitness pay-offs at these equilibria suggests that abandoning a partner is not always to the latter's detriment, when the potential for resource competition is taken into account, but may instead be of benefit to the 'abandoned' mate.

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“…We consider a population where individuals are genetically related to each other, which we characterize by the (demographically scaled) relatedness coefficient r (Lehmann and Rousset 2010; Akçay and Van Cleve 2012). In general, this scaled relatedness coefficient will be a function of variables such as migration rate and group size.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…, where m and s are the migration rates between m)s} groups and survivorship, respectively (Taylor and Irwin 2000;Akçay and Van Cleve 2012). In different biological scenarios, relatedness will vary with group size in different ways, though in general, it is expected to decrease with increasing group size.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In different biological scenarios, relatedness will vary with group size in different ways, though in general, it is expected to decrease with increasing group size. We further assume that individuals' competitive efforts are "sealed bid" efforts or that they do not respond to each other's behavior (Akçay and Van Cleve 2012). Given these assumptions, the evolutionarily stable level of competitive effort in a monomorphic population must satisfy…”

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Group Size and Social Conflict in Complex Societies

Shen

Akçay

Rubenstein

2014

The American Naturalist

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Conflicts of interest over resources or reproduction among individuals in a social group have long been considered to result in automatic and universal costs to group living. However, exploring how social conflict varies with group size has produced mixed empirical results. Here we develop a model that generates alternative predictions for how social conflict should vary with group size depending on the type of benefits gained from being in a social group. We show that a positive relationship between social conflict and group size is favored when groups form primarily for the benefits of sociality but not when groups form mainly for accessing group-defended resources. Thus, increased social conflict in animal societies should not be viewed as an automatic cost of larger social groups. Instead, studying the relationship between social conflict and the types of grouping benefits will be crucial for understanding the evolution of complex societies. DisciplinesBehavior and Ethology | Biology | Demography, Population, and Ecology | Population Biology Submitted May 1, 2013; Accepted September 17, 2013; Electronically published December 10, 2013 abstract: Conflicts of interest over resources or reproduction among individuals in a social group have long been considered to result in automatic and universal costs to group living. However, exploring how social conflict varies with group size has produced mixed empirical results. Here we develop a model that generates alternative predictions for how social conflict should vary with group size depending on the type of benefits gained from being in a social group. We show that a positive relationship between social conflict and group size is favored when groups form primarily for the benefits of sociality but not when groups form mainly for accessing groupdefended resources. Thus, increased social conflict in animal societies should not be viewed as an automatic cost of larger social groups. Instead, studying the relationship between social conflict and the types of grouping benefits will be crucial for understanding the evolution of complex societies.

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Behavioral Responses in Structured Populations Pave the Way to Group Optimality

Cited by 76 publications

References 68 publications

Population structure reduces benefits from partner choice in mutualistic symbiosis

Population structure reduces benefits from partner choice in mutualistic symbiosis

Cooperation and the common good

Group Size and Social Conflict in Complex Societies

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