Solving the prisoner's dilemma trap in Hamilton's model of temporarily formed random groups

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Hauptverfasser: Fontanari, José F., Santos, Mauro
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Fontanari, José F.
Santos, Mauro
author_facet Fontanari, José F.
Santos, Mauro
contents Explaining the evolution of cooperation in the strong altruism scenario, where a cooperator does not benefit from her contribution to the public goods, is a challenging problem that requires positive assortment among cooperators (i.e., cooperators must tend to associate with other cooperators) or punishment of defectors. The need for these drastic measures stems from the analysis of a group selection model of temporarily formed random groups introduced by Hamilton nearly fifty years ago to describe the fate of altruistic behavior in a population. Challenging conventional wisdom, we show analytically here that strong altruism evolves in Hamilton's original model in the case of biparental sexual reproduction. Moreover, when the cost of cooperation is small and the amplified contribution shared by group members is large, cooperation is the only stable strategy in equilibrium. Thus, our results provide a solution to the `problem of origination' of strong altruism, i.e. how cooperation can take off from an initial low frequency of cooperators. We discuss a possible reassessment of cooperation in cases of viral co-infection, as cooperation may even be favored in situations where the prisoner's dilemma applies.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_02440
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Solving the prisoner's dilemma trap in Hamilton's model of temporarily formed random groups
Fontanari, José F.
Santos, Mauro
Populations and Evolution
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
Explaining the evolution of cooperation in the strong altruism scenario, where a cooperator does not benefit from her contribution to the public goods, is a challenging problem that requires positive assortment among cooperators (i.e., cooperators must tend to associate with other cooperators) or punishment of defectors. The need for these drastic measures stems from the analysis of a group selection model of temporarily formed random groups introduced by Hamilton nearly fifty years ago to describe the fate of altruistic behavior in a population. Challenging conventional wisdom, we show analytically here that strong altruism evolves in Hamilton's original model in the case of biparental sexual reproduction. Moreover, when the cost of cooperation is small and the amplified contribution shared by group members is large, cooperation is the only stable strategy in equilibrium. Thus, our results provide a solution to the `problem of origination' of strong altruism, i.e. how cooperation can take off from an initial low frequency of cooperators. We discuss a possible reassessment of cooperation in cases of viral co-infection, as cooperation may even be favored in situations where the prisoner's dilemma applies.
title Solving the prisoner's dilemma trap in Hamilton's model of temporarily formed random groups
topic Populations and Evolution
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.02440