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

5. Cooperative Member/Group Societies

Phaniraj, Nikhil, et al. Marmosets mutually compensate for differences in rhythms when coordinating vigilance. PLoS Computational Biology.. May, 2024. Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Zurich cognitive biologists including Judith Burkart describe clever field experiments about how these communal primates adopt reciprocal behaviors to their advantage.

Synchronized animal behaviors often emerge from simple interaction rules. Here, we employed mathematical modeling to study how marmoset monkeys coordinate both vigilance and feeding behaviors. We found that pairs of marmosets adopt a state when one individual is feeding, the other is on guard, and vice-versa. Overall, our research (1) establishes marmosets as a strong candidate species for studying the cognitive aspects of social timing, (2) provides a novel mathematical framework that is tailored for studying synchronization in biological systems, and (3) underlines the implications of synchrony for marmosets and other animals. (Excerpt)

Pinheiro, Flavio, et al. Linking Individual and Collective Behavior in Adaptive Social Networks. Physical Review Letters. 116/128702, 2016. With Francisco Santo and Jorge Pacheco, University of Minho, Portugal biophysicists quantify and describe an inherent, beneficial balance between personal entities and communal cooperation.

Adaptive social structures are known to promote the evolution of cooperation. However, up to now the characterization of the collective, population-wide dynamics resulting from the self-organization of individual strategies on a coevolving, adaptive network has remained unfeasible. Here we establish a (reversible) link between individual (micro)behavior and collective (macro)behavior for coevolutionary processes. In particular, we show that the faster the relative rate of adaptation of the network, the smaller the critical fraction of cooperators required for cooperation to prevail, thus establishing a direct link between network adaptation and the evolution of cooperation. The framework developed here is general and may be readily applied to other dynamical processes occurring on adaptive networks, notably, the spreading of contagious diseases or the diffusion of innovations. (Abstract)

Powers, Simon, et al. The Concurrent Evolution of Cooperation and the Population Structures that Support It. Evolution. 65/6, 2011. A University of Southampton, Natural Systems Group, that includes Alexandra Penn and Richard Watson, further evinces per the extended Abstract that competition for survival alone does not force or control animal groupings. The paper is another sophisticated quantification of this neglected but now proven attribute. See also a commentary on this significant work “To Group or Not to Group?” by Eors Szathmary in Science (334/1648, 2011).

The evolution of cooperation often depends upon population structure, yet nearly all models of cooperation implicitly assume that this structure remains static. This is a simplifying assumption, because most organisms possess genetic traits that affect their population structure to some degree. These traits, such as a group size preference, affect the relatedness of interacting individuals and hence the opportunity for kin or group selection. We argue that models that do not explicitly consider their evolution cannot provide a satisfactory account of the origin of cooperation, because they cannot explain how the prerequisite population structures arise. Here, we consider the concurrent evolution of genetic traits that affect population structure, with those that affect social behavior. We show that not only does population structure drive social evolution, as in previous models, but that the opportunity for cooperation can in turn drive the creation of population structures that support it. This occurs through the generation of linkage disequilibrium between socio-behavioral and population-structuring traits, such that direct kin selection on social behavior creates indirect selection pressure on population structure. We illustrate our argument with a model of the concurrent evolution of group size preference and social behavior. (Abstract, 1527)

The coevolution model of Powers et al illustrates how genetic preference for a smaller group size can evolve because it increases the benefits of cooperation that its bearers experience. This view also may help our understanding of an important aspect of the major transitions in evolution – when originally separate individuals come together to form a higher-level evolutionary unit. The success of such a transition hinges on the evolutionary capacity of the groups in which the original individuals come together. As a simple example, the cell membrane that encompasses replicating molecules defines which components interact – a rigorous population structure that strongly favors cooperation because individuals “are sitting in the same boat.” (Szathmary, 1649)

Puy, Andreu, et al. Self-similarity of Turning Avalanches in Schooling Fish. arXiv:2309.16455. Five Barcelona system theorists including Romualdo Pastor-Satorras contribute further insights into nature’s ubiquitous preference for self-organized, critically poised activity. In this case it is well exhibited by all manner of animal groupings on the move. It is now customary for articles like this to lead with a review of how wide spread this beneficial phenomena seems to be (see below). For example, we note Temporal Criticality at arXiv:2309.15070 and Non-equilibrium Critical Scaling and Universality in a Quantum Simulator at. 2309.10856.

Our report will discuss how animal groupings transmit information by way of propagating waves or avalanches of behaviour. These cascades often display scale-free signatures in duration and size from a single individual to the whole group. We then contend that these findings can be seen expressions of critical phenomena from statistical physics. We argue that turning avalanches are collective decision-making processes so to select a new direction to move. We conclude by noting spatial and temporal similarities to aftershocks from seismology. (Excerpt)

A fascinating hypothesis in biology is that some systems may operate close to a critical point from statistical physics, separating an ordered from a disordered state of the system. Biological systems at a critical point are believed to possess functional advantages such as optimality in signal detection, storing and processing, large correlations in coordinated behaviour and widest spectrum of possible responses. Criticality is often associated to scale invariance, exemplified by power-law distributions lacking relevant characteristic scales besides natural cut-offs. There has been evidence of criticality signatures in neural activity and brain networks, gene regulatory networks, collective behaviour of cells or collective motion such as flocks of birds, fish schools, insect swarms, herds of mammals and human crowds. (1)

We believe our work represents a relevant contribution to the long-standing question of criticality, in particular to animal collective motion and in general to biological systems. Analysis of large data sets of experimental data reporting evidences of criticality have been scarce and are necessary to further elucidate this topic. (12)

Queller, David and Joan Strassmann. Beyond Society: The Evolution of Organismality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 364/3143, 2009. For these Rice University biologists, evolutionary science has matured to a point where one may to discern an alternative pathway for life’s advance than an aimlessly branching bush or web. Rather, an emergent nest of wholes within Wholes, agent entities within a bounded creature, arises from genomes to cells to multi-cellular beings, and onto “multi-species groups’ in a grand natural recapitulation.

The evolution of organismality is a social process. All organisms originated from groups of simpler units that now show high cooperation among the parts and are nearly free of conflicts. We suggest that this near-unanimous cooperation be taken as the defining trait of organisms. (3143) We now recognize that there are several levels of organism and that each level was attained by merging formerly separate individuals from a lower level (Buss 1987, Maynard Smith & Szathmary 1995, Michod 2000). Multi-cellular individuals are cooperative groups of cells, eukaryotic cells are cooperative assemblages of multiple prokaryotic lineages and prokaryotic cells must have emerged by assembly of formerly independent replicators. These major transitions in evolution construct new levels of organism out of separate individuals. (3143)

Rasskin-Gutman, Diego and Borja Esteve-Altava. Connecting the Dots: Anatomical Network Analysis in Morphological EvoDevo. Biological Theory. Online April, 2014. Along with Ralf Kurvers, Octavio Miramontes, Chris Knight, et al, University of Valencia, Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, researchers contribute a latest report on how life’s evolutionary phylogeny and developmental ontogeny is more influenced by an intrinsic, relational sociality than internal conflicts. This view is set within a deep history from Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire’s 19th century “Le Principe de Connexions” to a 20th century “disconnect from connectivity” and just now being revived and verified by the latest complexity sciences of a natural self-organization. As a specific case, the independent network propensities are seen in structural effect for many manners of skeletal and cranial forms. See also “Network Models in Anatomical Systems” by the authors and colleagues in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences (JAS, 175/89, 2011).

Morphological EvoDevo is a field of biological inquiry in which explicit relations between evolutionary patterns and growth or morphogenetic processes are made. Historically, morphological EvoDevo results from the coming together of several traditions, notably Naturphilosophie, embryology, the study of heterochrony, and developmental constraints. A special feature binding different approaches to morphological EvoDevo is the use of formalisms and mathematical models. Here we will introduce anatomical network analysis, a new approach centered on connectivity patterns formed by anatomical parts, with its own concepts and tools specifically designed for the study of morphological EvoDevo questions. Riedl’s concept of burden is tightly related to the use of anatomical networks, providing a nexus between the evolutionary patterns and the structural constraints that shape them. (Abstract)

Network theory has been extensively used to model the underlying structure of biological processes. From genetics to ecology, network thinking is changing our understanding of complex systems, specifically how their internal structure determines their overall behavior. Concepts such as hubs, scale-free or small-world networks, common in the complexity literature, are now used more and more in sociology, neurosciences, as well as other anthropological fields. Even though the use of network models is nowadays so widely applied, few attempts have been carried out to enrich our understanding in the classical morphological sciences such as in comparative anatomy or physical anthropology. The purpose of this article is to introduce the usage of network tools in morphology; specifically by building anatomical networks, dealing with the most common analyses and problems, and interpreting their outcome. (JAS Abstract)

Reeve, H. Kern and Bern Holldobler. The Emergence of a Superorganism Through Intergroup Competition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104/9736, 2007. Insect societies aid their survival by a superorganic stage by way of a complementarity of intra-and inter- group conflict and cooperation.

Reina, Andreagiovanni, et al. Psychophysical Laws and the Superorganism. Nature Scientific Reports. 8/4387, 2018. Reported more in Universality Affirmations, here University of Sheffield and ISTC, Italian National Research Council computational psychologists discern a consistence recurrence in kind across a wide array of creaturely phyla. Furthermore, a similar correspondence holds for both somatic physiologies and cerebral functions. By these lights, a common evolutionary track of individual organisms into viable communal forms becomes evident, as enhanced by intelligent capacities. See also Collective Decision Making by this group in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences (Thomas Bose, et al, 16/30, 2017).

Reuter, Hauke. Community Processes as Emergent Properties: Modelling Multilevel Interaction in Small Mammals Communities. Ecological Modelling. 186/4, 2005. This work can be seen as a microcosm, along with similar studies across nature’s nested expanse, which exhibits the recurrence of a universal creative, complementary system.

The presented individual-based model for the first time described small rodent communities as a set of interacting autonomously acting agents with a detailed life history and behavioral repertoire in a food-web setup composed of three tropic levels (rodents, …food and predators). Due to the representation with interacting entities, the dynamics on higher levels resulted in a self-organization process as emergent properties. (427)

Ridley, Matt. The Origins of Virtue. New York: Viking, 1996. An essay on how evolutionary biology can support and favor cooperation in a nested, “Russian doll” scale from genetic “teams” or networks to primate and human societies.

Rosenthal, Sara, et al. Revealing the Hidden Networks of Interaction in Mobile Animal Groups Allows Prediction of Complex Behavioral Contagion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112/4690, 2015. As the Abstract relates, Princeton University evolutionary ecologists including Iain Couzin quantify the presence of constant individual and communal activities and responses which can then be traced to neural phenomena. The vital benefit of a dynamic social reciprocity between members and group is an enhanced survival viability. Another notice to record is how individual liberty and variance can yet serve and be absorbed in a self-organized coherence.

Coordination among social animals requires rapid and efficient transfer of information among individuals, which may depend crucially on the underlying structure of the communication network. Establishing the decision-making circuits and networks that give rise to individual behavior has been a central goal of neuroscience. However, the analogous problem of determining the structure of the communication network among organisms that gives rise to coordinated collective behavior, such as is exhibited by schooling fish and flocking birds, has remained almost entirely neglected. Here, we study collective evasion maneuvers, manifested through rapid waves, or cascades, of behavioral change (a ubiquitous behavior among taxa) in schooling fish. We find that individuals use simple, robust measures to assess behavioral changes in neighbors, and that the resulting networks by which behavior propagates throughout groups are complex, being weighted, directed, and heterogeneous. Furthermore, we demonstrate that we can predict complex cascades of behavioral change at their moment of initiation, before they actually occur. Consequently, despite the intrinsic stochasticity of individual behavior, establishing the hidden communication networks in large self-organized groups facilitates a quantitative understanding of behavioral contagion. (Abstract)

Roughgarden, Joan. The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. The Stanford University biologist and gender activist further makes the case for an overdue correction to the distorted male evolutionary theory (and of everything else from religion to politics one may add) that admits only competition while excluding common propensities for mutual aid. The publisher’s website provides a good summary.

Are selfishness and individuality—rather than kindness and cooperation—basic to biological nature? Does a "selfish gene" create universal sexual conflict? In The Genial Gene, Joan Roughgarden forcefully rejects these and other ideas that have come to dominate the study of animal evolution. Building on her brilliant and innovative book Evolution's Rainbow, in which she challenged accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation, Roughgarden upends the notion of the selfish gene and the theory of sexual selection and develops a compelling and controversial alternative theory called social selection. This scientifically rigorous, model-based challenge to an important tenet of neo-Darwinian theory emphasizes cooperation, elucidates the factors that contribute to evolutionary success in a gene pool or animal social system, and vigorously demonstrates that to identify Darwinism with selfishness and individuality misrepresents the facts of life as we now know them.

[Prev Pages]   Previous   | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19  Next  [More Pages]