MEETING: The Developmental and Proximate Mechanisms Causing Individual Variation in Cooperative Behavior (SICB Symposium, January 8, 2017 in New Orleans, LA)

动物花很多时间与自己物种的成员进行社交互动。动物社会行为的形式包括求偶、交配和亲代照顾行为，以及群体生活物种中相关或不相关个体之间更复杂的协调和合作行为。近两个世纪以来，这种合作行为的进化原因和后果一直是生物学研究的焦点。许多理论模型，如那些基于互惠合作或共享遗传利益的理论模型，预测了合作可能进化的条件。尽管这些模型产生了富有成效的研究范式，在过去的半个世纪里塑造了动物行为的正式研究，但最近的模型表明，合作的进化也受到合作行为的个体差异程度以及潜在的发展和近似机制的严重影响。合作行为的个体差异及其背后的机制不仅没有得到经验主义者的充分研究，而且也被孤立地研究，尽管它们对合作和社会组织的进化具有潜在的重要性。本次研讨会将在综合与比较生物学学会的年度会议上举行，其目的是为研究合作行为中产生个体差异的发展和近似机制制定一个路线图。研讨会将汇集来自各个学科的高级和初级研究人员，并为学生举行联合会议。本次研讨会的主要目的是建立新的研究途径，利用机制和进化的解释来研究合作中的变异。在研讨会结束时，一系列论文将作为《综合与比较生物学》杂志的特刊发表，其中包括对本次研讨会中出现的主要主题的综合，这将有助于建立未来研究合作行为中个体差异的原因和后果的研究途径。

Animals spend much of their time interacting socially with members of their own species. Forms of animal social behavior range from courtship, mating, and parental care behaviors, to more complex coordinated and cooperative behavior among related or unrelated individuals in group-living species. The evolutionary causes and consequences of such cooperative behavior have been a focus of biological research for nearly two centuries. A number of theoretical models such as those based upon reciprocal cooperation or shared genetic interests predict the conditions under which cooperation is likely to evolve. Although these models have resulted in productive research paradigms that have shaped the formal study of animal behavior for the last half century, recent models suggest that the evolution of cooperation is also heavily influenced by the degree of individual variation in cooperative behavior as well as the underlying developmental and proximate mechanisms. Individual variation in cooperative behavior and the mechanisms underlying it are not only understudied by empiricists, but also studied in isolation, despite their potential importance for the evolution of cooperation and social organization. The goal of this symposium to be held at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology is to produce a road map to study the developmental and proximate mechanisms in generating individual variation in cooperative behavior. The symposium will bring together senior and junior researchers from across a range of disciplines and also hold a joint session for students. The primary aim of this symposium will be to establish new research avenues to study variation in cooperation using both mechanistic and evolutionary explanations. At the conclusion of the symposium, a series of papers will be published as a special issue in the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology, including a synthesis of the main emergent themes from this symposium that will help to establish future research avenues to study the causes and consequences of individual variation in cooperative behavior.