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A Sourcebook for the Worldwide Discovery of a Creative Organic Universe
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V. Life's Corporeal Evolution Develops, Encodes and Organizes Itself: An EarthWinian Genesis Synthesis

5. Cooperative Member/Group Societies

Toth, Amy and Gene Robinson. Evo-Devo and the Evolution of Social Behavior. Trends in Genetics. 23/7, 2007. University of Illinois biologists look into how a somatic developmental program can inform the study of communal organisms. They propose an extension of a highly conserved genetic homeobox ‘toolkit’ and consequent nested modularity, which repeats and reiterates itself, as a source of a perceived ‘division of labor’ in such colonies as social insects.

Traulsen, Arne and Martin Nowak. Evolution of Cooperation by Multilevel Selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 103/10952, 2006. A sophisticated model to quantify how cooperative processes are intrinsic to evolutionary advances.

In our opinion, group selection is an important organizing principle that permeates evolutionary processes from the emergence of the first cells to eusociality and the economics of nations. (10952)

Trumble, Benjamin, et al. Evolving the Neuroendocrine Physiology of Human and Primate Cooperation and Collective Action. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 370/Issue 1683, 2015. In this collection on social cohesion, UC Santa Barbara anthropologists contribute to appreciations of the oppositional yet complementary effects of testosterone and oxytocin. As the Abstract details, a reciprocity of competitive entity and viable group will succeed only if their dynamic balance is achieved. Oxytocin is credited for mother-infant bonds, male parental investment, pair-bonds, friendships, and intergroup interactions, while testosterone is implicated in mating, parental, dyadic, and societal strife. A growing recognition of the importance of these hormones for separation and/or relations quite signifies gender roles, search Autism for another array of papers.

While many hormones play vital roles in facilitating or reinforcing cooperative behaviour, the neurohormones underlying competitive and cooperative behaviours are largely conserved across all mammals. This raises the question of how endocrine mechanisms have been shaped by selection to produce different levels of cooperation in different species. Multiple components of endocrine physiology—from baseline hormone concentrations, to binding proteins, to the receptor sensitivity and specificity—can evolve independently and be impacted by current socio-ecological conditions or individual status, thus potentially generating a wide range of variation within and between species. Here, we highlight several neurohormones and variation in hormone receptor genes associated with cooperation, focusing on the role of oxytocin and testosterone in contexts ranging from parenting and pair-bonding to reciprocity and territorial defence. While the studies reviewed herein describe the current state of the literature with regard to hormonal modulators of cooperation and collective action, there is still a paucity of research on hormonal mechanisms that help facilitate large-scale collective action. (Abstract)

Twomey, Colin, et al. Searching for Structure in Collective Systems. Theory in Biosciences. March, 2020. . University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University and Humboldt University social biologists advance the study of ubiquitous creaturely assemblies by way of deep network principles. In regard, a middle scale mutuality between semi-autonomous members and overall clusters is found to best provide the viability that groupings achieve and require.

Collective systems such as fish schools, bird flocks, and neural networks are comprised of many mutually-influencing individuals, often without leaders, hierarchies, or persistent relationships. The remarkably organized group-level behaviors readily observable in these systems contrast with the ad hoc, often vicarious, complex interactions among their constituents. While these individual dynamics factor into group-level coordination, they do not reflect its macroscopic properties. Rather, the source of group cohesion may be better described at some intermediate, mesoscopic scale. We introduce a novel method from information-theoretic principles to find a compressed description of a system based on the actions and mutual dependencies of its constituents, which reveals the natural structure of the collective. (Abstract excerpt)

Valentini, Gabriele, et al. Division of Labour Promotes the Spread of Information in Colony Emigrations by the Ant Temnothorax rugatulus.. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. April, 2020. As this collaborative project to quantify animal groupings goes forth, here eight Arizona State University scientists including Sara Walker and Stephen Pratt point out the importance of steady clear communications for communal coherence and survival success.

The fitness of group-living animals depends on how members share information for decision-making. Theoretical studies have shown that collective choices can emerge in a homogeneous group of individuals who follow identical rules, but real animals are heterogeneous in composition. In social insects, for example, the transmission and processing of information is influenced by a well-organized division of labour. In this paper, we look at nest choices during colony emigrations of the ant Temnothorax rugatulus and the behavioural heterogeneity of workers. Using clustering methods and network analysis, we identify four primary, secondary, passive and wandering castes which covering the spread of information during an emigration. (Abstract excerpt)

Vannier, Jean, et al. Collective Behavior in 480 Million Year Old Trilobite Arthropods from Morocco. Nature Scientific Reports. 9/14941, 2019. Into this worldwise 21st century, a nine person French, Swiss and Moroccan team reconstruct how even these early invertebrates can be found to possess a sociality which served both individual and group survival. Today however, as public strife roils France, North Africa, and far beyond, how might such ancient forebears teach and guide us altogether to live in viable, mutually caring communities?

Interactions and coordination between conspecific individuals have produced a remarkable variety of collective behaviours. This co-operation occurs in vertebrate and invertebrate animals and is well expressed in the group flight of birds, fish shoals and highly organized activities of social insects. How individuals interact to constitute group-level patterns has been studied in extant animals through functional and theoretical approaches. Here monospecific linear clusters of trilobite arthropods from the lower Ordovician are interpreted as a societal activity due to hydrodynamic cues in detected by motion and touch sensors, or from reproduction behaviour as sexually mature conspecifics migrate to spawning grounds. This study confirms that collective groupings have an ancient origin and throughout the Cambrian-Ordovician interval. (Abstract excerpt)

Velicer, Gregory and Yuen-tsu Yu. Evolution of Novel Cooperative Swarming in the Bacterium Myxococcus Xanthus. Nature. 425/75, 2003. A candidate microbe demonstrates the evolutionary propensity to develop group cohesions, in this case by an extracellular fibril matrix.

Together, these studies show that literally ‘sticking together’ can result in quite distinct selective advantages in different organisms. More fundamentally, they directly illustrate the ability of micro-organisms to align their evolutionary interests by evolving primitive forms of cooperation. (77)

Villarreal, Luis. Origin of Group Identity. New York: Springer, 2009. For some years the University of California, Irvine, biologist has been of a mind that viruses or a viral presence serves a significant, constructive role in life’s origin and evolution. This opus volume spans theory, field, and experiment in support of a perceived propensity as a result to form bounded assemblies across prokaryote, cellular, fungi, animal, primate kingdoms, and onto human cultures, namely “from bacteria to belief.” A synopsis could be found in the Journal of Theoretical Biology (262/4, 2010) “Viruses are Essential Agents within the Roots and Stem of the Tree of Life” by Villarreal and Gunther Witzany.

Von Krbek, Larissa, et al. Assessing Cooperativity in Supramolecular Systems. Chemical Society Reviews. 46/2622, 2017. We cite a Systems Chemistry issue (Ashkenasy), because these Cambridge University, Free University of Berlin and University of New South Wales researchers find pervasive cooperative tendencies even in this “inorganic” complex material phase. For example, interannular, aggregate, chelate, allosteric, multivalent, and other thermodynamic effects are discussed as evidence. So nature’s iconic system of (molecular) components and (reciprocal) interactions now extends even deeper into a procreative cosmos.

Von Rueden, Chris, et al. Solving the Puzzle of Collective Action Through Inter-Individual Differences. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 370/Issue 1683, 2015. An introduction to this special issue by its editors, von Rueden, University of Richmond, Sergey Gavrilets (search), University of Tennessee, and Luke Glowacki, Harvard University, that seeks to quantify and explain, despite natural selection, an intrinsic propensity for animal, primate, and human cooperative groups to form and survive. An array of papers considers genetic, hormonal, individual, environmental, and communal aspects, problems, and benefits. Evolving the Neuroendocrine Physiology of Human and Primate Cooperation and Collective Action by Ben Trumble, et al, is reviewed below.

Wang, Xiaoling and Andrew Harrison. The Evolution of Cooperation. arXiv:2201.05353. Zhejiang University, China and University of Essex, UK sociophysicists provide a latest mathematical explanation of why an intrinsic proclivity among members of a viable group to get along with and assist each other is best. Once again the olden error of competitive struggles for fittest is set aside for beneficial community membership.

Range expansion is a universal process in biological systems, which has a large role in biological evolution. With a quantitative individual-based method seen as a stochastic process, we identify that the inherent self-proliferation advantage of cooperators relative to defectors better promotes cooperative benefits in range expansion. In this way, cooperators can rapidly colonize virgin space and establish spatial segregation more readily. The evolution of a population is impeded by the fitness-enhancing chemotactic movement of individuals. The short-sighted selfish behavior of individuals may not be that favored in the competition between populations. (Abstract excerpt)

Ward, Ashley, et al. Fast and Accurate Decisions through Collective Vigilance in Fish Shoals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Early Online, March, 2011. A premier research team of Ward, James Herbert-Read, University of Sydney, David Sumpter, Uppsala University, and Jens Krause, Humboldt University, devise elegant experiments backed by theory to gain novel appreciations of effective social dynamics. Its significance is noted in a Nature report (471/40, 2011) “When It Pays to Share Decisions” by Larissa Conradt of the University of Sussex, see second quote.

Although it has been suggested that large animal groups should make better decisions than smaller groups, there are few empirical demonstrations of this phenomenon and still fewer explanations of the how these improvements may be made. Here we show that both speed and accuracy of decision making increase with group size in fish shoals under predation threat. We examined two plausible mechanisms for this improvement: first, that groups are guided by a small proportion of high-quality decision makers and, second, that group members use self-organized division of vigilance. Repeated testing of individuals showed no evidence of different decision-making abilities between individual fish. Instead, we suggest that shoals achieve greater decision-making efficiencies through division of labor combined with social information transfer. (1)

Fast and accurate decision making is highly desirable in many walks of life, for humans as well as animals. Ward and colleagues’ study shows that it can be achieved by sharing decisions widely and using a self0organized system of communication. This is, of course, exactly the strategy that has long been exploited by Internet search engines, and in this sense the mosquitofish of Ward and co-workers’ experiments are not that dissimilar from Google.” (Conradt, 41)

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