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

5. Cooperative Member/Group Societies

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)

Weiser, Wolfgang. A Major Transition in Darwinism. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 12/9, 1997. The 20th century emphasis on a competitive struggle for existence is being superseded by the realization that cooperative relationships and group networks are an equally important factor.

Weiss, Kenneth and Anne Buchanan. The Cooperative Genome: Organisms as Social Contracts. International Journal of Developmental Biology. 53/5-6, 2009. The Penn State University scientists, who deftly meld biology, genetics, and anthropology in books and articles noted herein, survey the historic rethinking underway in these fields. A misreading of the Darwinian corpus has, over the past century and a half, and to Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century, emphasizd a competitive war of all against all. But a confluence of recent research avows an innate tendency and preference from genomes to Gaia for salutary cooperation. If our observational compass can be so expanded, an endemic modularity “from the subcellular to the ecological” can be found, equally real and complementary to separate agents alone.

ABSTRACT A predominant theme in much of evolutionary biology is that organisms are the product of relentless and precise natural selection among them, and that life is about the competition of all-against-all for success. However, developmental genetics has rapidly been revealing a very different picture of the nature of life. The organizing principles by which organisms are made are thoroughly based on complex hierarchies of molecular interactions that require multiple factors to be relentlessly cooperating with each other. Reconciling these two points of view involves changing the scale of observation, and a different understanding of evolution, in which cooperation and tolerance are more important than competition and intolerance. (753)

Logic is an appropriate concept, because phenogenetic phenomena are the higher-order emergent results of interactions: life is organized by relational principles – the presence, absence, combinations, and arrangements of effectors of various kinds. (754) Cellular life implies modular life, but modular organization is ubiquitous from the subcellular to the ecological. The nature of information storage in genomes is modular, including exons, centromeres, enhancers, insulators, repressors, promoters, telomeres, dispersed repeat elements,…. If they are anything, genomes are the billion-year product of duplication events that generate functional modules. (755)

Weiss, Kenneth, et al. The Red Queen and Her King: Cooperation at All Levels of Life. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 146/S53, 2011. With Anne Buchanan and Brian Lambert, Penn State anthropologists continue (search) their articulation of this ubiquitous reciprocal behavior as it serves to mitigate and integrate competitiveness across societal groupings from microbes to civilizations for the good of both creature and clan. A new slant is then advanced whence this vital mutuality is seen as familial in kind, ideally a regal complementarity of mother and father, not a royal battle. As Table 1, Evolution and Development Compared, and Table 2, Shared Principles of Life, note “Life is organized by units of information, modular structure, and physiology based on interacting systems,” and “Getting along is as important as getting ahead.”

The Red Queen in “Through the Looking Glass” is often used as a metaphor for the relentless, unremitting competitive struggle by which Darwin described life. That imagery fits comfortably in our culture, with its emphasis on competition and inequity, but less so for nature herself. Life is manifestly much more about cooperation, at all levels and through a variety of ubiquitous mechanisms, than it is about competition. Most organisms of most species are nowhere near the proverbial Malthusian edge of survival, such that selection will detect the tiniest difference in their performance and enhance its genetic basis. Cooperation through interaction of multiple entities is inherent in many fundamental aspects of life, and its importance is not widely enough appreciated. Here we discuss a set of principles by which this works. We illustrate the points with a computer simulation of a topic of interest to anthropology, the development of the head. In a sense, our culture has its metaphors reversed. The red royal family is a more accurate symbol for the true nature of life, human or otherwise. (Abstract)

Life is a family affair. (5) The red royal family has a king and a queen – and a lot of other relatives. Monarchies only when the society is a large, extended, cooperating family, an assemblage that survives because it gets along. By not it alone, but keeping it within the family, life has succeeded on this earth without being a relentless race to nowhere. Competition is important, but life was far more cooperative long before issues of social cooperation and competition arrived on the scene. If the principles we have outlined here are as ubiquitous as we think they are, they can help us understand the nature of life at levels from the most reductionist to the most holistic. (16)

West;ey, Peter, et al. Collective Movement in Ecology. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Vol.373/Iss.1746, 2018. An introduction to a special issue on this title subject, which as many entries here (Abaid, Bahar, Couzin) and Biology and Physics (Cavagna, Vicsek) attest has become an exemplar of similar self-organized complexities from midges and butterflies to salmon runs, starling flocks and wildebeest herds. An emphasis is on analytic techniques to better aid species management and conservation, such as Collective Animal Navigation and Migratory Culture: From Theoretical Models to Empirical Evidence by Andrew Berdahl, et al, and Using Activity and Sociability to Characterize Collective Motion by David Sumpter, et al (see review).

Recent advances in technology and quantitative methods have led to the emergence of a new field of study that stands to link insights of researchers from two closely related, but often disconnected disciplines: movement ecology and collective animal behaviour. To date, the field of movement ecology has focused on elucidating the internal and external drivers of animal movement and the influence of movement on broader ecological processes. By contrast, the field of collective behaviour has quantified the significant role social interactions play in the decision-making of animals within groups and has relied on controlled laboratory-based studies and theoretical models owing to the constraints of studying interacting animals in the field. (Abstract excerpt)

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