Related papers: The efficacy of group selection is increased by co…
Multilevel selection and the evolution of cooperation are fundamental to the formation of higher-level organisation and the evolution of biocomplexity, but such notions are controversial and poorly understood in natural populations. The…
The n-person Prisoner's Dilemma is a widely used model for populations where individuals interact in groups. The evolutionary stability of populations has been analysed in the literature for the case where mutations in the population may be…
Biological and social systems are structured at multiple scales, and the incentives of individuals who interact in a group may diverge from the collective incentive of the group as a whole. Mechanisms to resolve this tension are responsible…
Individuals in groups must often choose between acting selfishly and cooperating for the common good. The choices they make are based on their beliefs on how they expect their actions to affect others. We show that for a broad set of…
Multilevel selection is an important organizing principle that crucially underlies evolutionary processes from the emergence of cells to eusociality and the economics of nations. Previous studies on multilevel selection assumed that the…
Classic computational models of collective motion suggest that simple local averaging rules can promote many observed group level patterns. Recent studies, however, suggest that rules simpler than local averaging may be at play in real…
Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. The structure of a biological population affects which traits evolve. Understanding evolutionary game dynamics in structured populations is difficult. Precise results have been…
We introduce a model, based on the Evolutionary Game Theory, for studying the dynamics of group formation. The latter constitutes a relevant phenomenon observed in different animal species, whose individuals tend to cluster together forming…
The evolution of cooperation often depends upon population structure, yet nearly all models of cooperation implicitly assume that this structure remains static. This is a simplifying assumption, because most organisms possess genetic traits…
This article considers a mechanism to explain the emergence and evolution of social cooperation. Selfish individuals tend to benefit themselves, which makes it hard for the maintenance of cooperation between unrelated individuals. We…
The cohesion of a social group is the group's tendency to remain united. It has important implications for the stability and survival of social organizations, such as political parties, research teams, or online groups. Empirical studies…
In a world in which many pressing global issues require large scale cooperation, understanding the group size effect on cooperative behavior is a topic of central importance. Yet, the nature of this effect remains largely unknown, with lab…
Collective sensing is an emergent phenomenon which enables individuals to estimate a hidden property of the environment through the observation of social interactions. Previous work on collective sensing shows that gregarious individuals…
In many biological systems, natural selection acts simultaneously on multiple levels of organization. This scenario typically presents an evolutionary conflict between the incentive of individuals to cheat and the collective incentive to…
In a setting where heterogeneous agents interact to accomplish a given set of goals, cooperation is of utmost importance, especially when agents cannot achieve their individual goals by exclusive use of their own efforts. Even when we…
Microbes providing public goods are widespread in nature despite running the risk of being exploited by free-riders. However, the precise ecological factors supporting cooperation are still puzzling. Following recent experiments, we…
Cooperation is ubiquitous ranging from multicellular organisms to human societies. Population structures indicating individuals' limited interaction ranges are crucial to understand this issue. But it is still at large to what extend…
Altruistic behaviour is disadvantageous for the individual while is advantageous for its group. If the target of the selection is the individual, one would expect the selection process to lead to populations formed by wholly homogeneous…
Most of previous studies concerning the Public Goods Game assume either participation is unconditional or the number of actual participants in a competitive group changes over time. How the fixed group size, prescribed by social…
Ingroup favoritism, the tendency to favor ingroup over outgroup, is often explained as a product of intergroup conflict, or correlations between group tags and behavior. Such accounts assume that group membership is meaningful, whereas…