The coevolution of choosiness and cooperation

John M. McNamara, Zoltan Barta, Lutz Fromhage () and Alasdair I. Houston
Additional contact information
John M. McNamara: University of Bristol, University Walk
Zoltan Barta: University of Debrecen, Debrecen, H-4010, Hungary
Lutz Fromhage: School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1UG, UK
Alasdair I. Houston: School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1UG, UK

Nature, 2008, vol. 451, issue 7175, 189-192

Abstract: Choosy about cooperating If natural selection favours selfish behaviour, how is it that cooperation is so common in many species, including humans? Working with evolutionary simulations, McNamara et al. propose a novel evolutionary mechanism based on a positive coevolutionary feedback between cooperativeness and choosiness. If individuals vary in their degree of cooperativeness, and if they can decide whether or not to continue interacting with each other on the basis of their respective levels of cooperativeness, then cooperation can gradually evolve from an uncooperative state. On this model, individual behavioural differences are the key to the evolution of cooperation.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06455 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nat:nature:v:451:y:2008:i:7175:d:10.1038_nature06455

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature06455

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().