GROUP FORMATION AND THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALITY |
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Authors: | Thomas Garcia Silvia De Monte |
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Institution: | 1. école Normale Supérieure, Unité Mixte de Recherche 7625, écologie et évolution, 46 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France;2. E‐mail: t_garcia99@yahoo.fr;3. Université Pierre et Marie Curie‐Paris 6, Unité Mixte de Recherche 7625, écologie et évolution, CC 237‐7 quai Saint Bernard, 75005 Paris, France;4. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 7625, écologie et évolution, 46 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France |
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Abstract: | In spite of its intrinsic evolutionary instability, altruistic behavior in social groups is widespread in nature, spanning from organisms endowed with complex cognitive abilities to microbial populations. In this study, we show that if social individuals have an enhanced tendency to form groups and fitness increases with group cohesion, sociality can evolve and be maintained in the absence of actively assortative mechanisms such as kin recognition or nepotism toward other carriers of the social gene. When explicitly taken into account in a game‐theoretical framework, the process of group formation qualitatively changes the evolutionary dynamics with respect to games played in groups of constant size and equal grouping tendencies. The evolutionary consequences of the rules underpinning the group size distribution are discussed for a simple model of microbial aggregation by differential attachment, indicating a way to the evolution of sociality bereft of peer recognition. |
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Keywords: | Assortative mechanisms evolution of altruism group size public goods games social dilemma |
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