V. Life's Corporeal Evolution Develops, Encodes and Organizes Itself: An Earthtwinian Genesis Synthesis

5. Cooperative Member/Group Societies

Michod, Richard. Darwinian Dynamics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. A significant book which advocates the new multilevel view of evolution. This emergent scale is seen to result from a propensity for beneficial collaboration, which mediates debilitating competition.

What began as the study of animal social behavior some thirty-five years ago has now embraced the study of interactions at all biological levels. Instead of being viewed as a special characteristic clustered in certain groups of social animals, cooperation is now seen as the primary creative force behind ever greater levels of complexity and organization in all of biology. (xi)

Miller, Noam, et al. Both Information and Social Cohesion Determine Collective Decisions in Animal Groups. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Early edition, March, 2013. With Simon Garnier, Andrew Hartnett, and Iain Couzin, Princeton University behavioral biologists provide sophisticated quantifications of a naturally democratic Me and We reciprocity that well serves both creature and community. See Grund herein for more examples.

During consensus decision making, individuals in groups balance personal information (based on their own past experiences) with social information (based on the behavior of other individuals), allowing the group to reach a single collective choice. Previous studies of consensus decision making processes have focused on the informational aspects of behavioral choice, assuming that individuals make choices based solely on their likelihood of being beneficial (e.g., rewarded). However, decisions by both humans and nonhuman animals systematically violate such expectations. Here we experimentally disassociate cohesion-based decisions from information-based decisions using a three-choice paradigm and demonstrate that both factors are crucial to understanding the collective decision making of schooling fish. Balancing of personal information and social cues by individuals in key frontal positions in the group is shown to be essential for such group-level capabilities. Our results demonstrate the importance of integrating informational with other social considerations when explaining the collective capabilities of group-living animals. (Abstract excerpts)

Miramontes, Octavio and Og DeSouza. Social Evolution: New Horizons. arXiv:1404.6267. An April 2014 book chapter by a National Autonomous University of Mexico UNAM systems physicist and a Universidade Federal de Vicosa UFV, Brazil systems entomologist for Frontiers in Ecology, Evolution and Complexity, to appear online at Copit Arxives, hosted by UNAM. At the outset, we note concurrent papers herein by Rasskin-Gutman, Kurvers, Esteve-Altava, and others, that verify group cooperative benefits across every creaturely kind, as they take the form of ubiquitous nonlinear networks. By a deep evolutionary view, life’s origin is fostered by an “endosymbiotic mutualism” in cyanobacteria, an effect that then recurs at each sequential scale and instance. As living systems work and play to stay together, reference is made to constant “non-random interaction dynamics” which serve to script the act and show. An excellent overview entry.

Cooperation is a widespread natural phenomenon yet current evolutionary thinking is dominated by the paradigm of selfish competition. Recent advanced in many fronts of Biology and Non-linear Physics are helping to bring cooperation to its proper place. In this contribution, the most important controversies and open research avenues in the field of social evolution are reviewed. It is argued that a novel theory of social evolution must integrate the concepts of the science of Complex Systems with those of the Darwinian tradition. Current gene-centric approaches should be reviewed and complemented with evidence from multilevel phenomena (group selection), the constrains given by the non-linear nature of biological dynamical systems and the emergent nature of dissipative phenomena. (Abstract)

Moore, Douglas, et al. Inform: Efficient Information-Theoretic Analysis of Collective Behaviors. Frontiers in Robotics and AI. Online June, 2018. DM, Gabriele Valentini, and Sara Walker, Arizona State University and Michael Levin, Tufts University contribute to wide-ranging realizations reported herein and throughout (Cavagna, Giardina, Vicsek) that a common self-organizing complex network system of interacting entities can be seen in evident effect across all manner of animal groupings by way of advanced information-computational methods.

The study of collective behavior has relied on a variety of methodological tools ranging from population or game-theoretic models to empirical ones like Monte Carlo or multi-agent simulations. An approach that is increasingly being explored is the use of information theory as a methodological framework to study the flow of information and the statistical properties of collectives of interacting agents. We introduce Inform, an open-source framework for efficient information theoretic analysis that exploits the computational power of a C library while simplifying its use through a variety of common higher-level scripting languages.. We describe the Inform framework, study its computational efficiency and analyze three case studies: biochemical information storage in regenerating planaria, nest-site selection in the ant Temnothorax rugatulus, and collective decision making in multi-agent simulations. (Abstract edits)

Moussaid, Mehdi, et al. Collective Information Processing and Pattern Formation in Swarms, Flocks, and Crowds. Topics in Cognitive Science. 1/3, 2009. In an issue on Collective Behaviors, paper authors are Moussaid and Dirk Helbing from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the University of Toulouse’s Simon Garnier and Guy Theraulaz. Something cerebral is indeed going on in all varieties of animal and people groupings to achieve a common, viable knowledge, which can finally by way of statistical physics and complexity science be theoretically modeled.

The spontaneous organization of collective activities in animal groups and societies has attracted a considerable amount of attention over the last decade. This kind of coordination often permits group-living species to achieve collective tasks that are far beyond single individuals' capabilities. In particular, a key benefit lies in the integration of partial knowledge of the environment at the collective level. In this contribution, we discuss various self-organization phenomena in animal swarms and human crowds from the point of view of information exchange among individuals. In particular, we provide a general description of collective dynamics across species and introduce a classification of these dynamics not only with respect to the way information is transferred among individuals but also with regard to the knowledge processing at the collective level. (Abstract, 469)

Nanjundiah, Vidyanand and Stuart Newman. Introduction: E Pluribus Unum. Journal of Biosciences. 39/2, 2017. In this Indian Institute of Science journal, Center for Human Genetics, Bangalore and New York Medical College, Valhalla systems evolutionary biologists open a special issue that began as papers from a May 2012 meeting on the theme of Individuals and Groups, held in Almora India. The Latin title phrase means Out of many, One, which was the motto of the United States until the 1953 when replaced by In God we Trust. From 14 entries, we note Nascent Multicellular Life and the Emergence of Individuality by Silvia De Monte and Paul Rainey, Group Behavior in Physical, Chemical and Biological Systems, by Cihan Saclioglu et al, and Origins of Evolutionary Transitions, Ellen Clarke (search each paper).

Niizato, Takayuki, et al. Information structure of heterogeneous criticality in a fish school.. Scientific Reports. 14/29758, 2024. University of Tsukuba, University of Tokyo, Hitotsubashi University and Kyoto Institute of Technology post a unique application of mathematical neuroscience to dynamic animal behaviors which leads to and achieves a common notice of self-organized critical phenomena in both these widely removed cases.

Integrated information theory (IIT) assesses the degree of consciousness in living organisms. It can also be applied to other systems, including those exhibiting critical behaviors. In this study, we applied IIT to the collective behaviour of Plecoglossus altivelis and observed that the group integrity (Φ) was maximized at the critical state. Notably, core fish in the high-criticality subgroups were less affected by internal and external stimuli compared to those in low-criticality subgroups. These findings are consistent with known critical phenomena and offer a new perspective on the dynamics of an empirical critical state. (Excerpt)

Critical phenomena are widely observed in living organisms as system situated between ordered and disordered states. Although critical theoretical studies originated from statistical physics, various applications in living systems. Many researchers suggest that living systems utilize these critical states for optimal information transfer, high computational
power and adaptive behaviours. (1)

Noe, Roland, et al, eds. Economics in Nature: Social Dilemmas, Mate Choice and Biological Markets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. If animal behavior is viewed through the lens of economics and game theory, it possesses similar aspects such as the exchange of commodities for mutual benefit, cooperative collectives for resource allocation and so on.

Nowak, Martin. Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation. Science. 314/1560, 2006. Namely kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection. New theoretical insights show a natural tendency to foster beneficial agreement in each case. See also Robert Boyd The Puzzle of Human Sociality in the same issue.

Cooperation is needed for evolution to construct new levels of organization. Genomes, cells, multicellular organisms, social insects, and human society are all based on cooperation. (1560)

Nowak, Martin and Karl Sigmund. Evolution of Indirect Reciprocity. Nature. 437/1291, 2005. This mathematical study of evolutionary social dynamics by senior researchers at Harvard and the University of Vienna again confirms a basic penchant for inherently cohesive societies. Its abstract offers a good summary.

Natural selection is conventionally assumed to favour the strong and selfish who maximize their own resources at the expense of others. But many biological systems, and especially human societies, are organized around altruistic, cooperative interactions. How can natural selection promote unselfish behavior? Various mechanisms have been proposed, and a rich analysis of indirect reciprocity has recently emerged: I help you and somebody else helps me. The evolution of cooperation by indirect reciprocity leads to reputation building, morality judgement and complex social interactions with ever-increasing cognitive demands. (1291)

Nowak, Martin and Roger Highfield. Supercooperators: The Mathematics of Evolution, Altruism and Human Behaviour. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2011. The Harvard professor of mathematical biology and the editor of New Scientist, with an Oxford doctorate, collaborate in a popular exposition of this significant empathic turn. A United States edition, SuperCooperators: Why We Need Each Other to Succeed, will appear concurrently from Free Press.

Everyone is familiar with Darwin's revolutionary idea about the survival of the fittest, and most people agree that it works, but Darwin's famous theory has one major chink. If life is about survival of the fittest, then why would we risk our own life to jump into a river to save a stranger? Some people argue that issues such as charity, fairness, forgiveness and cooperation are evolutionary loose ends, side issues that are of little consequence. But as Harvard's celebrated evolutionary biologist Martin Nowak explains in this ground-breaking book, cooperation is central to the four-billion-year-old puzzle of life. Cooperation is fundamental to how molecules in the primordial soup crossed the watershed that separates dead chemistry from biochemistry. Cooperation is the key to understanding why language evolved, an event that is as significant as the evolution of the first primitive organism. And it goes without saying that cooperation is the reason that people live in towns, villages and cities. Cooperation can even help to explain the spread of cancer cells and the role of punishment in society. In Supercooperators Martin Nowak deftly unpacks the five basic laws of cooperation - Kin Selection, Direct Reciprocity, Indirect Reciprocity, Network Reciprocity and Group Selection - in order to explain some of the most fundamental mechanics beneath everyday life. (Canongate)

O’Malley, Maureen. Endosymbiosis and Its Implications for Evolutionary Theory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112/10277, 2015. A paper for the October 2014 NAS Sackler Colloquium entitled Symbioses Becoming Permanent which is mostly about how symbiotic unions, belittled for decades, are indeed a prime contributor to life’s nested, communal emergence. The University of Sydney philosopher presents a history from The (Lynn) Margulis Era of Symbiogenesis, Neo-Darwinian Counterarguments, famously denounced by Richard Dawkins, to this current acceptance and praise. Such an Endosymbiotic paradigm is metabolism-centric, with biochemical, energetic, community features, which then fit into and support the major transitions scale. Amongst companion papers are Major Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality by Stuart West, et al (search), Heritable Symbiosis by Gordon Bennett and Nancy Moran, and Toward Major Evolutionary Transitions Theory 2.0 by Eors Szathmary (search). See also herein Host Biology in Light of the Microbiome by Seth Bordenstein as part of this historic affirmation, which the late Lynn Margulis fought for since the 1970s.

Historically, conceptualizations of symbiosis and endosymbiosis have been pitted against Darwinian or neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. In more recent times, Lynn Margulis has argued vigorously along these lines. However, there are only shallow grounds for finding Darwinian concepts or population genetic theory incompatible with endosymbiosis. But is population genetics sufficiently explanatory of endosymbiosis and its role in evolution? Population genetics “follows” genes, is replication-centric, and is concerned with vertically consistent genetic lineages. It may also have explanatory limitations with regard to macroevolution. Even so, asking whether population genetics explains endosymbiosis may have the question the wrong way around. We should instead be asking how explanatory of evolution endosymbiosis is, and exactly which features of evolution it might be explaining. This paper will discuss how metabolic innovations associated with endosymbioses can drive evolution and thus provide an explanatory account of important episodes in the history of life. Metabolic explanations are both proximate and ultimate, in the same way genetic explanations are. Endosymbioses, therefore, point evolutionary biology toward an important dimension of evolutionary explanation. (Abstract)

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