Cooperation and the common good

Johnstone, Rufus A.; Rodrigues, António M. M.

doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0086

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(39 reference statements)

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“…Reciprocal cooperation and involved negotiations among mates sharing parental investment is a promising area for future research (cf. [235,253]; see also [254]). …”

Section: The Importance Of Context For the Evolution Of Cooperationmentioning

confidence: 87%

Correlated pay-offs are key to cooperation

Taborsky

Frommen

Riehl

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

122

199

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One contribution of 18 to a theme issue 'The evolution of cooperation based on direct fitness benefits.' Subject Areas: behaviour, evolution, ecology Keywords: cooperation, reciprocity, commodity trading, direct fitness benefits, non-kin, decision rules The general belief that cooperation and altruism in social groups result primarily from kin selection has recently been challenged, not least because results from cooperatively breeding insects and vertebrates have shown that groups may be composed mainly of non-relatives. This allows testing predictions of reciprocity theory without the confounding effect of relatedness. Here, we review complementary and alternative evolutionary mechanisms to kin selection theory and provide empirical examples of cooperative behaviour among unrelated individuals in a wide range of taxa. In particular, we focus on the different forms of reciprocity and on their underlying decision rules, asking about evolutionary stability, the conditions selecting for reciprocity and the factors constraining reciprocal cooperation. We find that neither the cognitive requirements of reciprocal cooperation nor the often sequential nature of interactions are insuperable stumbling blocks for the evolution of reciprocity. We argue that simple decision rules such as 'help anyone if helped by someone' should get more attention in future research, because empirical studies show that animals apply such rules, and theoretical models find that they can create stable levels of cooperation under a wide range of conditions. Owing to its simplicity, behaviour based on such a heuristic may in fact be ubiquitous. Finally, we argue that the evolution of exchange and trading of service and commodities among social partners needs greater scientific focus.

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“…Reciprocal cooperation and involved negotiations among mates sharing parental investment is a promising area for future research (cf. [235,253]; see also [254]). …”

Section: The Importance Of Context For the Evolution Of Cooperationmentioning

confidence: 87%

Correlated pay-offs are key to cooperation

Taborsky

Frommen

Riehl

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

122

199

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Individuals that invest highly in courtship or other forms of sexual displays might simply have a reduced energetic capacity to invest in parental care. When resource competition is taken into account, the abandoned mate might even benefit from being abandoned (Johnstone and Rodrigues 2016). Consequently, offspring desertion is conventionally considered as a form of investment in future reproduction, and the sexes are viewed as racing to desert first (e.g., Maynard Smith 1977;Lazarus 1990;Houston et al 2005).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conversely, parental care is often not only physiological demanding and might lead to an exhaustion of energy reserves, but it also consumes time that could have been otherwise invested in attracting and mating with additional partners (see references in Stiver and Alonzo 2009). This is especially the case when parents and offspring rely on a limited food source: an early departure of one of the mates might free up resources for the caring parent and for the young (Johnstone and Rodrigues 2016). The parent that remains does so because he or she has been caught in a "cruel bind"-either invest resources caring for the offspring alone, or abandon and waste all the resources invested in these offspring.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, this view has recently been challenged. When resource competition is taken into account, the abandoned mate might even benefit from being abandoned (Johnstone and Rodrigues 2016). This is especially the case when parents and offspring rely on a limited food source: an early departure of one of the mates might free up resources for the caring parent and for the young (Johnstone and Rodrigues 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When resource competition is taken into account, the abandoned mate might even benefit from being abandoned (Johnstone and Rodrigues 2016). This is especially the case when parents and offspring rely on a limited food source: an early departure of one of the mates might free up resources for the caring parent and for the young (Johnstone and Rodrigues 2016). If we develop this idea further, in animals that raise young on a scarce but valuable nutrient rich resource, it might be even advantageous to remain with the brood, as this could provide the caregiver with resources important for the expression of sexually selected traits.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Staying with the young enhances the fathers’ attractiveness in burying beetles

et al. 2017

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Studying the relationship between parental and mating effort helps us to understand the evolution of parental care and, consequently, has been the subject of many theoretical and empirical investigations. Using burying beetles as a model, we found no correlation between the intensity of a sexual signal (sex pheromone quantity) and the amount of care provided by males. However, males that were given the opportunity to breed and care for young went on to produce a higher amount of their sexual signal and attracted three times more females in the field than control males that were not given the opportunity to breed. The likely explanation for our finding is that specific aspects of care in burying beetles, that is the defense and preservation of a nutrient rich breeding resource, a small vertebrate cadaver, is not only beneficial for the offspring but also for the adults themselves. Obtaining a good carrion meal possibly enables males to store resources that they can subsequently allocate toward sexual signaling. Collectively, our results highlight that conditions can exist where male participation in brood care has a positive effect on its sexual attractiveness. This in turn might have facilitated the evolution of male assistance in parental care.

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Evolution of strategic cooperation

Madgwick

Wolf

2020

Evolution Letters

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Group-beneficial behaviors have presented a long-standing challenge for evolutionary theory because, although their benefits are available to all group members, their costs are borne by individuals. Consequently, an individual could benefit from "cheating" their group mates by not paying the costs while still reaping the benefits. There have been many proposed evolutionary mechanisms that could favor cooperation (and disfavor cheating) in particular circumstances. However, if cooperation is still favored in some circumstances, then we might expect evolution to favor strategic cooperation, where the level of contribution toward groupbeneficial behavior is varied in response to the social context. To uncover how and why individuals should contribute toward group-beneficial behavior across social contexts, we model strategic cooperation as an evolutionary game where players can quantitatively adjust the amount they contribute toward group-beneficial behavior. We find that the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) predicts, unsurprisingly, that players should contribute in relation to their relatedness to the group. However, we surprisingly find that players often contribute to cooperation in such a way that their fitness is inverse to their relatedness to the group such that those that contribute to cooperation end up with the same return from group-beneficial behavior, essentially removing any potential advantage of higher relatedness. These results bring to light a paradox of group-beneficial cooperation: groups do best when they contain highly related individuals, but those with the highest relatedness to the group will often have the lowest fitness within the group. K E Y W O R D S : Cooperation, group selection, kin selection, public goods, social behavior. Impact SummaryWhat motivates organisms to contribute toward groupbeneficial behaviors? This question is challenging for evolutionary theory because such cooperative behaviors typically incur a personal cost, whereas their benefits are open to exploitation by everyone in the group-including noncontributors. To address this fundamental problem, we develop a simple game theoretical model of cooperation through "public goods." We allow the players in the game to strategically adjust their contributions to cooperation to understand how and why individuals should make costly contributions to the potential benefit of others. Our model elucidates how relatedness within groups molds cooperative strategies, revealing a paradoxical outcome that those with the highest relatedness to a group end up with the lowest fitness in the group. We also identify a surprising result, where individuals who contribute to cooperation do so in a way that leaves them with an equal fraction of the group's fitness, even if they have different levels of relatedness to the group. In addition to providing a clear framework that can be used to make testable empirical predictions, our model also provides a possible mechanism that can explain the maintenance of genetic variation in cooperative s...

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Cooperation and the common good

Cited by 9 publications

References 31 publications

Correlated pay-offs are key to cooperation

Correlated pay-offs are key to cooperation

Staying with the young enhances the fathers’ attractiveness in burying beetles

Evolution of strategic cooperation

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