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The other cooperation problem: generating benefit

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Abstract

Understanding how cooperation evolves is central to explaining some core features of our biological world. Many important evolutionary events, such as the arrival of multicellularity or the origins of eusociality, are cooperative ventures between formerly solitary individuals. Explanations of the evolution of cooperation have primarily involved showing how cooperation can be maintained in the face of free-riding individuals whose success gradually undermines cooperation. In this paper I argue that there is a second, distinct, and less well explored, problem of cooperation that I call the generation of benefit. Focusing on how benefit is generated within a group poses a different problem: how is it that individuals in a group can (at least in principle) do better than those who remain solitary? I present several different ways that benefit may be generated, each with different implications for how cooperation might be initiated, how it might further evolve, and how it might interact with different ways of maintaining cooperation. I argue that in some cases of cooperation, the most important underlying “problem” of cooperation may be how to generate benefit, rather than how to reduce conflict or prevent free-riding.

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Notes

  1. Skyrms (2003) explores the evolution of cooperation with the “stag hunt”, a model where risk-avoidance rather than cheating prevents the maintenance of cooperation. This work still contrasts with the focus I have in this paper.

  2. A significant exception to this claim is the work by Peter Corning, a fact bought to my attention by an anonymous referee (see, for example, Corning (1983, 2005)). Corning emphasises the importance of understanding synergistic interactions in evolution of cooperation: “Whatever functionally significant factors are responsible in a given context for causing differential survival and reproduction” (Corning 2005, p. 71). His emphasis is similar to my own, though it is not spelt out using the distinction I make in this paper. Corning’s work also intends to marry together a great many more ideas than I explore, especially at the human end of the cooperative scale.

  3. Referred to in Maynard-Smith and Szathmáry (1995) as a “levels of selection” problem.

  4. At least, division of labour as it has traditionally been conceived (following Smith (1981)) is about how benefit is generated. But it is also argued that the division of reproductive labour—such as the arise of a germ/soma distinction—is a way of reducing cheating. I shall revisit this idea in section "Interplay between the two aspects" where I consider the interplay between these two aspects of cooperation.

  5. Corning (2005, p. 73) makes a similar connection.

  6. For a broad selection of current issues, the paper by Lehmann and Keller (2006) is followed by 15 commentaries by many of the key contributors to the field of cooperation.

  7. The direct benefits of an action are those that accrue directly to an individual, increasing its reproductive output. Indirect benefits are those that accrue via relatedness. Thus helping a family member might provide no direct benefit, yet it may be beneficial (in an evolutionary sense), as it increases their reproductive output. Both direct and indirect benefit increase the likelihood of an individual’s traits appearing in some future generation.

  8. Recent work suggests that the flagella perform an additional function to motility (Short et al. 2006; Solari et al. 2006). The coordinated beating of the multiple flagella enhances nutrient uptake at the surface of the sphere of cells. This is important, as the metabolic demands of the cellular group increase faster than surface area as the size of the group goes up.

  9. There are, of course, many other reasons to explain why ants currently group together. But we are looking for isolated reasons that might explain the origin of these kinds of behaviours.

  10. Much eukaryotic regulation is done by the complex interaction of several binding processes. These processes are combinatorial, and can create complex switches that effectively switch on as a result of some “boolean” logic on the multiple signals (Bolouri and Davidson 2002).

  11. It should be noted that the issue of multiple mating is a complex one. A recent recent review provides 14 hypotheses (!) for this type of genetic variability (Crozier and Fjerdingstad 2001). The current consensus appears to be (very sensibly) that there may be multiple reasons for it.

  12. Though see Leroi et al. (2003) for a spectacular exception to this—a cancer that has escaped its original organism (a dog) and is transmitted by sexual contact.

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Acknowledgements

Peter Godfrey-Smith, Kim Sterelny, and an anonymous reviewer provided guidance and many helpful suggestions on earlier drafts.

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  1. Philosophy Program, RSSS and Centre for Macroevolution & Macroecology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia

    Brett Calcott

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Calcott, B. The other cooperation problem: generating benefit. Biol Philos 23, 179–203 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-007-9095-5

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