Does kin discrimination promote cooperation?

Gonçalo Faria and Andy Gardner
Additional contact information
Gonçalo Faria: IAST - Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, School of Biology [University of St Andrews] - University of St Andrews [Scotland]
Andy Gardner: School of Biology [University of St Andrews] - University of St Andrews [Scotland]

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Genetic relatedness is a key driver of the evolution of cooperation. One mechanism that may ensure social partners are genetically related is kin discrimination, in which individuals are able to distinguish kin from non-kin and adjust their behaviour accordingly. However, the impact of kin discrimination upon the overall level of cooperation remains obscure. Specifically, while kin discrimination allows an individual to help more-related social partners over less-related social partners, it is unclear whether and how the population average level of cooperation that is evolutionarily favoured should differ under kin discrimination versus indiscriminate social behaviour. Here, we perform a general mathematical analysis in order to assess whether, when and in which direction kin discrimination changes the average level of cooperation in an evolving population. We find that kin discrimination may increase, decrease or leave unchanged the average level of cooperation, depending upon whether the optimal level of cooperation is a convex, concave or linear function of genetic relatedness. We develop an extension of the classic ‘tragedy of the commons' model of cooperation in order to provide an illustration of these results. Our analysis provides a method to guide future research on the evolutionary consequences of kin discrimination.

Date: 2020-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-soc
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03048825
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Biology Letters, 2020, 16 (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-03048825/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03048825

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().