Cooperation in Mutualisms: Contracts, Markets, Space, and Dispersal (BIOCONTRACT)

互惠合作：契约、市场、空间和分散（BIOCONTRACT）

• 批准号: 0750480
• 负责人: Naomi Pierce
• 金额: $ 24.3万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-01-01 至 2011-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0750480&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Cooperation; Mutualisms; Contracts; Markets; Space

Explaining cooperation between species, or mutualism, poses a challenge to evolutionary theory. Many of the mechanisms that promote cooperation within species are not applicable to cooperation between species. Thus, although mutualisms are ubiquitous in nature and economically important (e.g. pollination), there is currently no general theoretical framework that explains the evolution of mutualisms. This study attempts to develop such a framework by adapting contract theory from economics to model how "natural contracts" evolve between mutualistic species. The research program in mutualism is organized around the assignment of specific mutualisms to one of four existing classes of solution: by-products, partner fidelity, partner choice, and a special case of spatial games. In contrast, economic contract theory, which was devised to model transactions in which information is asymmetrically distributed, is organized around three classes of problems faced by economic agents: moral hazard, adverse selection, and signaling. Mapping the four biological solutions onto the three contract problems reveals that mutualism theory concentrates on moral hazard and hardly recognizes the existence of adverse selection and signaling as formal problems. In fact, adverse selection is a problem in many mutualisms, as potential partners go through a pairing-off or assortment stage, during which cheaters can invade. Economic theory proposes market segmentation solutions to the problem of adverse selection; this approach is applied to mutualism. This project begins with the utilization of a subset of contract theory, Principal-Agent theory, to investigate how the evolution of natural contracts distributes the benefits of mutualism among partners. A major difference between natural and human contracts is that there is no legal system to enforce contracts made between species in the natural world. This work draws and expands on economic theory of self-enforcing contracts to investigate how mutualisms persist in the face of potential exploitation by cheaters. Contract theory is modified to contemplate scenarios in which individuals have bounded rationality and optimization responses to a dynamic process under natural selection. Replicator dynamics, inspired from population genetics, to investigate which contracts can evolve. The broader implications of this study are as follows. First, integration of research and education: this project will train a postdoctoral researcher in contract theory and the evolution of cooperation with the joint involvement of the Departments of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Economics at Harvard University. Second, dissemination to a wide, interdisciplinary audience: the researchers will make the results widely available by interacting with the other consortia in the TECT program, publishing in international journals, both economic and biological, and by creating and maintaining a webpage with a self-edited dictionary of economic terms and their biological translation. Third, enhancement of infrastructure for research and education: this project is part of a collaborative effort between researchers in different disciplines and countries to understand the fundamental nature of cooperation. Through a funding initiative from the European Science Foundation to study the evolution of cooperation and trading (TECT), a partnership is created between researchers in the U.S., U.K., Austria, Portugal, Hungary, and France. Fourth, benefits to society: in economics and biology, the study of cooperation has often taken second stage to the study of conflict and competition. This project brings together economists and biologists with considerable experience studying cooperative phenomena in their respective fields. Through this collaboration, an interchange of ideas between economics and biology will be developed that enriches the understanding of the evolution of cooperative behavior in both human and non-human organisms.

解释物种之间的合作，或互利共生，对进化理论提出了挑战。许多促进物种内部合作的机制并不适用于物种之间的合作。因此，虽然互惠在自然界中普遍存在，并且在经济上很重要（例如授粉），但目前还没有一个通用的理论框架来解释互惠的进化。本研究试图发展这样一个框架，从经济学的契约理论模型如何“自然契约”互惠物种之间的演变。互利主义的研究计划是围绕特定的互利主义分配到四个现有的解决方案：副产品，合作伙伴的忠诚度，合作伙伴的选择，以及空间游戏的特殊情况。相比之下，经济契约理论是为了模拟信息不对称分布的交易而设计的，它围绕着经济主体面临的三类问题组织起来：道德风险，逆向选择和信号。将四种生物学解决方案映射到三个契约问题上，揭示了互惠主义理论集中于道德风险，而几乎不承认逆向选择和信号传导的存在是形式问题。事实上，逆向选择在许多互惠关系中都是一个问题，因为潜在的合作伙伴会经历配对或分类阶段，在此期间，作弊者可能会入侵。经济学理论提出了市场分割解决逆向选择问题的方法;这种方法适用于互惠共生。本计画首先利用契约理论的一个子集--委托代理理论，来探讨自然契约的演化如何在合作伙伴之间分配互惠共生的利益。自然契约和人类契约的一个主要区别是，没有法律的体系来强制执行自然界物种之间的契约。 这项工作借鉴并扩展了自我执行合同的经济理论，以研究互惠主义如何在面对欺诈者的潜在剥削时持续存在。契约理论的修改设想的情况下，个人有限理性和优化的反应下的自然选择的动态过程。复制动力学，灵感来自群体遗传学，研究哪些合同可以进化。这项研究的更广泛的影响如下。 第一，研究与教育的整合：本项目将与哈佛大学的有机生物学系和进化生物学系以及经济学系共同参与，培养一名契约理论和合作进化的博士后研究人员。第二，传播给广泛的跨学科受众：研究人员将通过与TECT计划中的其他财团互动，在国际期刊上发表，包括经济和生物学，以及通过创建和维护一个具有经济术语及其生物学翻译的自编词典的网页来广泛提供结果。 第三，加强研究和教育基础设施：该项目是不同学科和国家的研究人员为了解合作的基本性质而开展的合作努力的一部分。通过欧洲科学基金会的一项资助倡议，研究合作与贸易的演变（TECT），在美国的研究人员之间建立了伙伴关系，英国、奥地利、葡萄牙、匈牙利和法国。第四，对社会的益处：在经济学和生物学中，对合作的研究往往处于对冲突和竞争的研究的第二阶段。该项目汇集了在各自领域研究合作现象具有丰富经验的经济学家和生物学家。通过这种合作，经济学和生物学之间的思想交流将得到发展，丰富了对人类和非人类生物体合作行为进化的理解。