Promotion of Cooperation by Selective Group Extinction

Abstract

Multilevel selection is an important organizing principle that crucially underlies evolutionary processes from the emergence of cells to eusociality and the economics of nations. Previous studies on multilevel selection assumed that the effective higher-level selection emerges from lower-level reproduction. This leads to selection among groups, although only individuals reproduce. We introduce selective group extinction, where groups die with a probability inversely proportional to their group fitness. When accounting for this the critical benefit-to-cost ratio is substantially lowered. Because in game theory and evolutionary dynamics the degree of cooperation crucially depends on this ratio above which cooperation emerges previous studies may have substantially underestimated the establishment and maintenance of cooperation.

Accepted for publication in New Journal of Physics

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Determinants of public cooperation in multiplex networks
• The Replicator Dynamics for Multilevel Selection in Evolutionary Games
• Effects of income redistribution on the evolution of cooperation in spatial public goods games
• Evolutionary Dynamics Within and Among Competing Groups
• Turbulent coherent structures and early life below the Kolmogorov scale