RESEARCH ARTICLE
Group Selection and Reciprocity among Kin
Neelesh Dahanukar*, 1, 2, Milind Watve1, 2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 2
First Page: 66
Last Page: 79
Publisher Id: TOBIOJ-2-66
DOI: 10.2174/1874196700902010066
Article History:
Received Date: 06/11/2008Revision Received Date: 21/01/2009
Acceptance Date: 23/01/2009
Electronic publication date: 08/7/2009
Collection year: 2009
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The question how Darwinian mechanisms lead to the evolution of individually costly cooperative behavior has given rise to a number of hypotheses. However, attempts to build a synthesis where different types of mechanisms coexist and interact at different levels of selections are still scarce. Here we derive simple game theoretical models where the group level conflicts are resolved by group selection while simultaneously within group competition is resolved by kin selection and reciprocity. We show that none of the mechanisms, when alone, is as robust in evolving and maintaining cooperation as a synthesis of all. Furthermore, we show that initially within group conflicts can be overcome only by kin selection and not reciprocity. However, once common, different types of reciprocities can maintain high levels of cooperation even if average relatedness among individuals is lowered, groups become large, and the benefits of cooperation are reduced. Based on the synthesis we also propose a possible route to the evolution of social and eusocial systems.
