Between-group competition and human cooperation.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Puurtinen M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC2581672 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Aggressive interactions between groups are frequent in human societies and can bear significant fitness costs and benefits (e.g. death or access to resources). During between-group competitive interactions, more cohesive groups (i.e. groups formed by individuals who cooperate in group defence) should out-perform less cohesive groups, other factors being equal (e.g. group size). The cost/benefit of between-group competition are thought to have driven correlated evolution of traits that favour between-group aggression and within-group cooperation (e.g. parochial altruism). Our aim was to analyse whether the proximate relationship between between-group competition and within-group cooperation is found in 3-10 years old children and the developmental trajectory of such a relationship. We used a large cohort of children (n = 120) and tested whether simulated between-group competition increased within-group cooperation (i.e. how much of a resource children were giving to their group companions) in two experiments. We found greater within-group cooperation when groups of four children were competing with other groups then in the control condition (no between-group competition). Within-group cooperation increased with age. Our study suggests that parochial altruism and in-group/out-group biases emerge early during the course of human development.
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Project description:Why humans are prone to cooperate puzzles biologists, psychologists and economists alike. Between-group conflict has been hypothesized to drive within-group cooperation. However, such conflicts did not have lasting effects in laboratory experiments, because they were about luxury goods, not needed for survival ("looting"). Here, we find within-group cooperation to last when between-group conflict is implemented as "all-out war" (eliminating the weakest groups). Human subjects invested in helping group members to avoid having the lowest collective pay-off, whereas they failed to cooperate in control treatments with random group elimination or with no subdivision in groups. When the game was repeated, experience was found to promote helping. Thus, not within-group interactions alone, not random group elimination, but pay-off-dependent group elimination was found to drive within-group cooperation in our experiment. We suggest that some forms of human cooperation are maintained by multi-level selection: reciprocity within groups and lethal competition among groups acting together.
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Project description:By analyzing protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks, one can find that a protein may have multiple binding partners. However, it is difficult to determine whether the interactions with these partners occur simultaneously from binary PPIs alone. Here, we construct the yeast and human competition-cooperation relationship networks (CCRNs) based on protein structural interactomes to clearly exhibit the relationship (competition or cooperation) between two partners of the same protein. If two partners compete for the same interaction interface, they would be connected by a competitive edge; otherwise, they would be connected by a cooperative edge. The properties of three kinds of hubs (i.e., competitive, modest, and cooperative hubs) are analyzed in the CCRNs. Our results show that competitive hubs have higher clustering coefficients and form clusters in the human CCRN, but these tendencies are not observed in the yeast CCRN. We find that the human-specific proteins contribute significantly to these differences. Subsequently, we conduct a series of computational experiments to investigate the regulatory mechanisms that avoid competition between proteins. Our comprehensive analyses reveal that for most yeast and human protein competitors, transcriptional regulation plays an important role. Moreover, the human-specific proteins have a particular preference for other regulatory mechanisms, such as alternative splicing.
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Project description:A fundamental puzzle of human evolution is how we evolved to cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers in transient interactions. Group-level selection on culturally differentiated populations is one proposed explanation. We evaluate a central untested prediction of Cultural Group Selection theory, by assessing whether readiness to cooperate between individuals from different groups corresponds to the degree of cultural similarity between those groups. We documented the normative beliefs and cooperative dispositions of 759 individuals spanning nine clans nested within four pastoral ethnic groups of Kenya-the Turkana, Samburu, Rendille and Borana. We find that cooperation between groups is predicted by how culturally similar they are, suggesting that norms of cooperation in these societies have evolved under the influence of group-level selection on cultural variation. Such selection acting over human evolutionary history may explain why we cooperate readily with unrelated and unfamiliar individuals, and why humans' unprecedented cooperative flexibility is nevertheless culturally parochial.
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Project description:Competition between species is a major ecological force that can drive evolution. Here, we test the effect of this force on the evolution of cooperation within a species. We use sucrose metabolism of budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as a model cooperative system that is subject to social parasitism by cheater strategies. We find that when cocultured with a bacterial competitor, Escherichia coli, the frequency of cooperator phenotypes in yeast populations increases dramatically as compared with isolated yeast populations. Bacterial competition stabilizes cooperation within yeast by limiting the yeast population density and also by depleting the public goods produced by cooperating yeast cells. Both of these changes induced by bacterial competition increase the cooperator frequency because cooperator yeast cells have a small preferential access to the public goods they produce; this preferential access becomes more important when the public good is scarce. Our results indicate that a thorough understanding of species interactions is crucial for explaining the maintenance and evolution of cooperation in nature.
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Project description:UnlabelledIron deficiency (ID) is the most common gestational micronutrient deficiency in the world, targets the fetal hippocampus and striatum and results in long-term behavioral abnormalities. These structures primarily mediate spatial and procedural memory, respectively, in the rodent but have interconnections that result in competition or cooperation during cognitive tasks. We determined whether ID-induced impairment of one alters the function of the other by genetically inducing a 40% reduction of hippocampus iron content in late fetal life in mice and measuring dorsal striatal gene expression and metabolism and the behavioral balance between the two memory systems in adulthood. Slc11a2(hipp/hipp) mice had similar striatum iron content, but 18% lower glucose and 44% lower lactate levels, a 30% higher phosphocreatine:creatine ratio, and reduced iron transporter gene expression compared to wild type (WT) littermates, implying reduced striatal metabolic function. Slc11a2(hipp/hipp) mice had longer mean escape times on a cued task paradigm implying impaired procedural memory. Nevertheless, when hippocampal and striatal memory systems were placed in competition using a Morris Water Maze task that alternates spatial navigation and visual cued responses during training, and forces a choice between hippocampal and striatal strategies during probe trials, Slc11a2(hipp/hipp) mice used the hippocampus-dependent response less often (25%) and the visual cued response more often (75%) compared to WT littermates that used both strategies approximately equally. Hippocampal ID not only reduces spatial recognition memory performance but also affects systems that support procedural memory, suggesting an altered balance between memory systems.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11689-010-9049-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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Project description:Transcription factors have to distinguish proper targets from a large pool of potential binding sites. Here we explore how MSL2 and CLAMP cooperate to bind their specific targets. Using an in vitro chromatin reconstitution system and by mutating the interaction domain of CLAMP we show how direct and indirect cooperation of TF binding influence binding specificity.
2023-07-27 | GSE224981 | GEO
Project description:Between-group competition in social animals appears to be a prominent selective pressure shaping the evolution of territoriality and cooperation [1-4]. Evidence for an effect of between-group competition on fitness in territorial species, however, is mostly lacking because of difficulty in measuring between-group competition and its long-term impact [5]. Between-group competition corresponds to a complex set of interactions between neighboring groups, and its intensity seems to depend on the competitive abilities of each interacting group [6, 7]. We tested whether the competitive ability of groups and the pressure exerted by neighboring groups affected the reproductive success of wild female chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus). Using long-term data on four neighboring groups in the Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, collected over the course of 54 observation years, we measured the competitive ability of habituated groups using the number of mature males and the pressure exerted by non-habituated neighbors with an index of neighbor pressure that combined the frequency of neighboring encounters and related spatial information. Importantly, we found that experiencing low neighbor pressure provides fitness benefits through increased offspring survival and shorter inter-birth intervals. Also, many males in a group are associated with shorter inter-birth intervals. We conclude that high between-group competition hampers fast reproduction and offspring survival when exposure is during the prenatal period. Our findings suggest that having many males in a group results in fitness benefits and that between-group competition should be considered as a potential selective pressure that shaped key social adaptations in the hominoid lineage.
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