Bio3520
Chapter 9
Cooperation
Animals
often exhibit
cooperation
among
individuals
despite
possible
to the individuals involved.
Cooperative behavior provides
to the individual only if other group members also behave
cooperatively.
Four
models
on the evolution and maintenance of cooperation are:
, byproduct
,
selection, and
selection.
Reciprocity
can be modeled by
theory, in particular the non-zero-sum game of
dilemma,
where a strategy of "always
" may preclude cooperation.
Players that encounter each other again engage in the
prisoner's dilemma, where a robust strategy is
for
tat
(TFT), which may explain
activities
such as predator
inspection.
ls
T
>
R
? This is true if a fish that trails an inspector receives a
payoff than if it inspected with an
partner
and the payoff is iterated when inspectors transfer the
information
they receive.
Is
R
>
P
? This is true for population that do engage in inspection
behavior,
since those individuals recognize the
involved in the behavior.
Is
P
>
S
? This is true if the payoff to mutual
(
P
) is greater than that inspecting alone (
S
); the
behavior
of many bait fish indicate that lone fish suffer high rates of predation.
Do inspectors use the
strategy? Inspectors appear to be:
; they cooperate in inspecting at about the same time,
; inspectors cease inspection if their partner
stops.
: if a "cheater" resumes inspection, its partner resumes inspection as well.
Byproduct
mutualism
involves an
immediate
for
not
cooperating;
no score-keeping is required for cooperation.
House
sparrows
may call other sparrows to share
when the benefit, such as
detection, outweighs the cost of sharing.
Group selection
models
predict that between groups, natural selection favors
if groups with more cooperators produce a benefit such as more offspring.
A
analysis can reveal the evolutionary history of behaviors such as cooperative
breeding.
Cooperative
breeding
often leads to reproductive
of
nondominant
individuals. Often
play a
proximate
role in such behaviors.
Cooperation among
males
is found in
, where two or more individuals cooperate against another individual or
group,
usually to gain access to
females.
Interspecific cooperation (
) is also important in shaping behavior between many animal species, such as black
ants
and the Imperial Blue butterfly, which communicate by
their
bodies.