To be cooperative or selfish: individual decisions in a model society

理解合作行为的基础是对生物和社会科学的一个重大挑战。我们处理诸如全球变暖和生物多样性迅速丧失等问题的能力将取决于个人和国家之间前所未有的合作水平。我们的工作将使用一种与我们早期人类祖先的社会具有许多关键特征的动物模型，通过实验和详细的分子分析，探索个体之间合作互动的基础。这项工作将揭示推动社会合作进化的关键原则，并将帮助我们理解人性中最重要的组成部分之一的基础。

Understanding the basis of cooperative behaviour is a major challenge to biological and social science. Our ability to deal with problems such as global warming and the rapid loss of biodiversity, will depend upon an unprecedented level of cooperation between individuals and countries. Our work will use an animal model that shares a number of key characteristics with the societies of our early human ancestors to explore, through experiments and detailed molecular analysis, the basis of cooperative interactions between individuals. This work will uncover the key principles that drive the evolution of cooperation in society and will help us to understand the basis of one the most important components of human nature.