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Stochastic Models for the Inference of Life Evolution

Social evolution in structured populations

Débarre, F., Hauert, C., Doebeli, M.

Nature Communications

2014

Understanding the evolution of social behaviours such as altruism and spite is a long-standing problem that has generated thousands of articles and heated debates. Previous theoretical studies showed that whether altruism and spite evolve may be contingent on seemingly artificial model features, such as which rule is chosen to update the population (for example, birth-death or death-birth), and whether the benefits and costs of sociality affect fecundity or survival. Here we unify these features in a single comprehensive framework. We derive a general condition for social behaviour to be favoured over non-social behaviour, which is applicable in a large class of models for structured populations of fixed size. We recover previous results as special cases, and we are able to evaluate the relative effects of benefits and costs of social interactions on fecundity and survival. Our results highlight the crucial importance of identifying the relative scale at which competition occurs.

Bibtex

@article{debarre_social_2014,
Author = {Débarre, F. and Hauert, C. and Doebeli, M.},
Title = {Social evolution in structured populations},
Journal = {Nature Communications},
Volume = {5},
Pages = {3409},
Keywords = {Algorithms, Altruism, Biological Evolution, Humans,
Interpersonal Relations, Models, Biological, Population
Dynamics, Social Behavior},
abstract = {Understanding the evolution of social behaviours such
as altruism and spite is a long-standing problem that
has generated thousands of articles and heated debates.
Previous theoretical studies showed that whether
altruism and spite evolve may be contingent on
seemingly artificial model features, such as which rule
is chosen to update the population (for example,
birth-death or death-birth), and whether the benefits
and costs of sociality affect fecundity or survival.
Here we unify these features in a single comprehensive
framework. We derive a general condition for social
behaviour to be favoured over non-social behaviour,
which is applicable in a large class of models for
structured populations of fixed size. We recover
previous results as special cases, and we are able to
evaluate the relative effects of benefits and costs of
social interactions on fecundity and survival. Our
results highlight the crucial importance of identifying
the relative scale at which competition occurs.},
doi = {10.1038/ncomms4409},
issn = {2041-1723},
language = {eng},
pmid = {24598979},
year = 2014
}

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