| | |
Summary: vol. 159, no. 2 the american naturalist february 2002
Population Ecology, Nonlinear Dynamics, and Social
Evolution. I. Associations among Nonrelatives
Leticia Avile´s,* Patrick Abbot,
and Asher D. Cutter
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of
Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721
Submitted November 8, 2000; Accepted July 16, 2001
abstract: Using an individual-based and genetically explicit sim-
ulation model, we explore the evolution of sociality within a
population-ecology and nonlinear-dynamics framework. Assuming
that individual fitness is a unimodal function of group size and that
cooperation may carry a relative fitness cost, we consider the evo-
lution of one-generation breeding associations among nonrelatives.
We explore how parameters such as the intrinsic rate of growth and
group and global carrying capacities may influence social evolution
and how social evolution may, in turn, influence and be influenced
by emerging group-level and population-wide dynamics. We find
that group living and cooperation evolve under a wide range of
parameter values, even when cooperation is costly and the interac-
|
