Mathematical Sciences: Collaborative Research on CooperationAmong Animals: Mutualism Versus Reciprocity

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Mesterton-Gibbons 9626609 The investigators use evolutionary game theory to study cooperative behavior among animals. They work toward a general theory that categorizes cooperative behavior in nature as kin-selected behavior, group-selected behavior, byproduct mutualism, or reciprocal altruism. In pursuit of this goal, their investigation focuses on cooperative behaviors that can be excluded on a priori grounds from the first two categories mentioned above. Examples of such behaviors are food sharing in ravens and defensive behavior in lions. Accordingly, the investigators focus on reciprocity versus mutualism and develop a mathematical model with the power to discriminate between these two categories of cooperative behavior. The model is important because many examples of reciprocity in nature have been hypothesized, but hardly any have been proven: without such a model, virtually every example is equally interpretable as a case of mutualism. The goal of the study is to determine whether animals can cooperate in nature because they keep score of favors done to -- and favors received from -- specific individuals, or because acting in their long-term self-interest coincides with acting in the best interest of their community, even though they do not keep score. From a purely scientific perspective, an answer to this question will advance current knowledge of animal behavior considerably. From a more utilitarian perspective, even though the study's primary subjects are non-human animals in the wild, the investigators' findings will be relevant to achieving cooperation among humans as well. In particular, the study's findings may help to solve the urgent problem of the commons, i.e., the problem of designing cooperative social structures for sustainable management of the global environment.