Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Benefits of memory for the evolution of tag-based cooperation in structured populations

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We study the effects of working memory capacity and network rewiring probability on the evolution of cooperation in the standard and modified versions of an agent-based model of tag-mediated altruism. In our evolutionary model, computational agents populate a large complex network, engage into multiplayer Prisoner’s Dilemma-like interactions, and reproduce sexually. Agents carry discernible phenotypic traits subject to mutation, memorize their own experiences, and employ different strategies when interacting with different types of co-players. Choices made are selected from a pool of two conditional and two unconditional strategies, depending on the available memory contents and phenotypic similarity among interactors. For the dominating strategy in our standard model version, we found a strong dependence of cooperation on network structure and a weak one on memory, whereas in the modified version, the structural effect was weaker than that of memory. Most importantly, we found that the previously reported decline of cooperation in memory-based models, typically observed at a high memory capacity, is now prevented with the help of tags. This suggests that the evolutionary advantages of memory capacity limits may be far more complex than previously assumed. For much smaller systems, we observed a quasi-symmetric alternation of the two winning groups of strategists. This result provides an example of ingroup biased interactions that are characterized by bursts of intra-tag cooperation interspersed with periods of unconditional transient altruism. Such switches of strategies may represent a boosting mechanism necessary for the emergence and stability of global altruism in its early evolutionary stages.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Alonso-Sanz R (2009) Spatial order prevails over memory in boosting cooperation in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma. Chaos 19:023102

    Google Scholar 

  • Alonso-Sanz R, Martin M (2006) Memory boosts cooperation. Int J Mod Phys C 17:841–852

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Antal T, Ohtsuki H, Wakeley J, Taylor PD, Nowak MA (2009) Evolution of cooperation by phenotypic similarity. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106:8597-8600

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Axelrod R, Hamilton WD (1981) The evolution of cooperation. Science 211:1390-1396

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Axelrod R, Hammond RA, Grafen A (2004) Altruism via kin-selection strategies that rely on arbitrary tags with which they coevolve. Evolution 58:1833–1838

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bastolla U, Fortuna MA, Pascual-García A, Ferrera A, Luque B, Bascompte J (2009) The architecture of mutualistic networks minimizes competition and increases biodiversity. Nature 458:1018–1020

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bode NWF, Wood AJ, Franks DW (2011) Social networks and models for collective motion in animals. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 65:117–130

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buldyrev SV, Parshani R, Paul G, Stanley HE, Havlin S (2010) Catastrophic cascade of failures in interdependent networks. Nature 464:1025–1028

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cassar A (2007) Coordination and cooperation in local, random and small world networks: experimental evidence. Games Econ Behav 58:209–230

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Choi JK, Bowles S (2007) The coevolution of parochial altruism and war. Science 318:636–640

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen E (2012) The evolution of tag-based cooperation in humans: the case for accent. Curr Anthropol 53:588–616

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Colman AM, Browning L, Pulford BD (2012) Spontaneous similarity discrimination in the evolution of cooperation. J Theor Biol 299:162–171

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Croft DP, Darden SK, Ruxton GD (2009) Predation risk as a driving force for phenotypic assortment: a cross-population comparison. Proc Biol Sci 276:1899–1904

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Croft DP, Krause J, Darden SK, Ramnarine IW, Faria JJ, James R (2009) Behavioural trait assortment in a social network: patterns and implications. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 63:1495–1503

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Curry O, Dunbar RIM (2011) Altruism in networks: the effect of connections. Biol Lett 7:651–653

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • De Dreu CKW, Greer LL, Van Kleef GA, Shalvi S, Handgraaf MJJ (2011) Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108:1262–1266

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • de Waal FBM (2000) Attitudinal reciprocity in food sharing among brown capuchin monkeys. Anim Behav 60:253–261

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Declerck CH, Boone C, Emonds G (2013) When do people cooperate? The neuroeconomics of prosocial decision making. Brain Cogn 81:95–117

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Efferson C, Lalive R, Fehr E (2008) The coevolution of cultural groups and ingroup favoritism. Science 321:1844–1849

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fewell JH (2003) Social insect networks. Science 301:1867–1870

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Franks DW, Ruxton GD, James R (2010) Sampling animal association networks with the gambit of the group. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 64:493–503

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fu F, Tarnita CE, Christakis NA, Wang L, Rand DG, Nowak MA (2012) Evolution of in-group favoritism. Sci Rep 2:460

    PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • García J, van den Bergh JCJM (2011) Evolution of parochial altruism by multilevel selection. Evol Hum Behav 32:277–287

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gardner A, West SA (2009) Greenbeards. Evolution 64:25-38

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gracia-Lázaro C, Ferrer A, Ruíz G, Tarancón A, Cuesta JA, Sánchez A, Moreno Y (2012) Heterogeneous networks do not promote cooperation when humans play a Prisoner’s dilemma. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109:12922–12926

    Google Scholar 

  • Hadzibeganovic T, Lima FWS, Stauffer D (2012) Evolution of tag-mediated altruistic behavior in one-shot encounters on large-scale complex networks. Comput Phys Commun 183:2315– 2321

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hadzibeganovic T, Stauffer D, Schulze C (2009) Agent-based computer simulations of language choice dynamics. Ann NY Acad Sci 1167:221–229

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hales D (2005) Change your tags fast! A necessary condition for cooperation?Lect Notes Comput Sci 3415:89–98

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton WD (1964) The genetical evolution of social behaviour, I & II. J Theor Biol 7:1–52

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hammond R A, Axelrod R (2006a) The evolution of ethnocentrism. J Confl Resolut 50:926–936

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hammond RA, Axelrod R (2006b) Evolution of contingent altruism when cooperation is expensive. Theor Popul Biol 69:333–338

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hartshorn M, Kaznatcheev A, Shultz T (2013) The evolutionary dominance of ethnocentric cooperation. J Artif Soc Soc Simul 16:7

    Google Scholar 

  • Hauert C, Doebeli M (2004) Spatial structure often inhibits the evolution of cooperation in the snowdrift game. Nature 428:643–646

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Horváth G, Kovárik J, Mengel F (2012) Limited memory can be beneficial for the evolution of cooperation. J Theor Biol 300:193–205

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ihara Y (2011) Evolution of culture-dependent discriminate sociality: a gene-culture coevolutionary model. Philos Trans R Soc B 366:889–900

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jansson F (2013) Pitfalls in spatial modelling of ethnocentrism: a simulation analysis of the model of Hammond and Axelrod. J Artif Soc Soc Simul 16:2

    Google Scholar 

  • Jansen VAA, van Baalen M (2006) Altruism through beard chromodynamics. Nature 440:663-666

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Keller L, Ross KG (1998) Selfish genes: a green beard in the red fire ant. Nature 394:573–575

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Kim J-W (2010) A tag-based evolutionary Prisoner’s Dilemma game on networks with different topologies. J Artif Soc Soc Simul 13:2

    Google Scholar 

  • Kossinets G, Watts DJ (2006) Empirical analysis of an evolving social network. Science 311:88–90

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Krause J, Ruxton GD (2002) Living in groups. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Krupp DB, DeBruine LM, Barclay P (2008) A cue of kinship promotes cooperation for the public good. Evol Hum Behav 29:49–55

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laird RA (2011) Green beard effect predicts the evolution of traitorousness in the two-tag Prisoner’s Dilemma. J Theor Biol 288:84–91

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Laird RA (2012) Evolutionary strategy dynamics for tag-based cooperation and defection in the spatial and aspatial Snowdrift game. Intl J Bifurcat Chaos 22:1230039

    Google Scholar 

  • Lima FWS, Hadzibeganovic T, Stauffer D (2009) Evolution of ethnocentrism on undirected and directed Barabási-Albert networks. Physica A 388:4999–5004

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lusseau D, Newman MEJ (2004) Identifying the role that animals play in their social networks. Proc R Soc Lond B 271:S477–S481

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marlowe FW (2005) Hunter-gatherers and human evolution. Evol Anthropol 14:54–67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marshall JAR (2011) Ultimate causes and the evolution of altruism. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 65:503–512

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Masuda N (2012) Ingroup favoritism and intergroup cooperation under indirect reciprocity based on group reputation. J Theor Biol 311:8–18

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Maynard Smith J, Szathmáry E (1997) The major transitions in evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • McAvity DM, Bristow T, Bunker E, Dreyer A (2013) Perception without self-matching in conditional tag based cooperation. J Theor Biol 333:58–67

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Milinski M, Semmann D, Bakker TCM, Krambeck HJ (2001) Cooperation through indirect reciprocity: image scoring or standing strategy? Proc R Soc Lond B 268:2495–2501

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Molenberghs P (2013) The neuroscience of in-group bias. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 37:1530–1536

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Moreira J, Vukov J, Sousa C, Santos FC, d’Almeida AF, Santos MD, Pacheco JM (2013) Individual memory and the emergence of cooperation. Anim Behav 85:233–239

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nettle D, Grace JB, Choisy M, Cornell HV, Guegan J-F, Hochberg ME (2007) Cultural diversity, economic development and societal instability. PLoS ONE 2:e929

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nowak MA (2006) Five rules for the evolution of cooperation. Science 314:1560–1563

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nowak MA, Sigmund K (2005) Evolution of indirect reciprocity. Nature 437:1291–1298

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nowak MA, Tarnita CE, Antal T (2010) Evolutionary dynamics in structured populations. Philos Trans R Soc B 365:19–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ohtsuki H, Hauert C (2006) A simple rule for the evolution of cooperation on graphs and social networks. Nature 441:502– 505

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Qin S-M, Chen Y, Zhao X-Y, Shi J. (2008) Effect of memory on the prisoner’s dilemma game in a square lattice. Phys Rev E 78:041129

    Google Scholar 

  • Qiu T, Hadzibeganovic T, Chen G, Zhong L-X, Wu X-R (2010) Cooperation in the snowdrift game on directed small-world networks under self-questioning and noisy conditions. Comput Phys Commun 181:2057–2062

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Queller DC, Ponte E, Bozzaro S, Strassmann JE (2003) Single-gene greenbeard effects in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. Science 299:105–106

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Railsback SF, Grimm V (2011) Agent-based and individual-based modeling: a practical introduction. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Rand DG, Nowak MA (2013) Human cooperation. Trends Cogn Sci 17:413–425

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Riolo RL, Cohen MD, Axelrod R (2001) Evolution of cooperation without reciprocity. Nature 414:441–443

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sánchez AD, Lopez JD, Rodriguez MA (2002) Nonequilibrium phase transitions in directed small-world networks. Phys Rev Lett 88:048701

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Santos FC, Pacheco JM (2006) A new route to the evolution of cooperation. J Evol Biol 19:726–733

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Semmann D (2012) Conditional cooperation can hinder network reciprocity. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109:12846–12847

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Semmann D, Krambeck HJ, Milinski M (2005) Reputation is valuable within and outside one’s own social group. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 57:611–616

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shutters ST, Hales D (2013) Tag-mediated altruism is contingent on how cheaters are defined. J Artif Soc Soc Simulat 16:4

    Google Scholar 

  • Sigmund K (2009) Sympathy and similarity: the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106:8405– 8406

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sinervo B, Chaine A, Clobert J, Calsbeek R, Hazard L, Lancaster L, McAdam AG, Alonzo S, Corrigan G, Hochberg ME (2006) Selfrecognition, color signals, and cycles of greenbeard mutualism and altruism. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 103:7372–7377

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sinervo B, Clobert J (2003) Morphs, dispersal behavior, genetic similarity, and the evolution of cooperation. Science 300:1949–1951

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Stauffer D (2013) A biased review of sociophysics. J Stat Phys 151:9–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stevens JR, Volstorf J, Schooler LJ, Rieskamp J (2011) Forgetting constrains the emergence of cooperative decision strategies. Front Psychol 1:235

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sugihara G, Ye H (2009) Cooperative network dynamics. Nature 458:979–980

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Summers K, Crespi B (2005) Cadherins in maternal-foetal interactions: red queen with a green beard? Proc R Soc Lond B 272:643–649

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello M (2009) Why we cooperate. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Traulsen A, Nowak MA (2007) Chromodynamics of cooperation in finite populations. PLoS ONE 3:e270

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Traulsen A, Semmann D, Sommerfeld RD, Krambeck HJ, Milinski M (2010) Human strategy updating in evolutionary games. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107:2962–2966

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Van Bavel JJ, Packer DJ, Cunningham WA (2008) The neural substrates of in-group bias: a functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation. Psychol Sci 19:1131–1139

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • van Veelen M, García J, Rand DG, Nowak MA (2012) Direct reciprocity in structured populations. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109:9929–9934

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Voelkl B, Kasper C (2009) Social structure of primate interaction networks facilitates the emergence of cooperation. Biol Lett 5:462–464

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Volstorf J, Rieskamp J, Stevens JR (2011) The good, the bad, and the rare: memory for partners in social interactions. PLoS ONE 6:e18945

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • West SA, Griffin AS, Gardner A (2006) Social semantics: altruism, cooperation, mutualism, strong reciprocity and group selection. J Evol Biol 20:425–432

    Google Scholar 

  • White CE, Winans SC (2007) Cell-cell communication in the plant pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Philos Trans R Soc B 362:1135–1148

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Wu T, Fu F, Zhang Y, Wang L (2013) Adaptive tag switching reinforces the coevolution of contingent cooperation and tag diversity. J Theor Biol 330:45–55

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully thank the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development of Brazil (CNPq) for the provided financial support. Comments of three anonymous reviewers on a previous version of this paper are also greatly acknowledged. The preparation of this work was partially supported by SGI®Altix®1350 and CENAPAD-UNICAMP-USP, SP, BRAZIL.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Graz, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Tarik Hadzibeganovic

  2. Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal do Piauí, 64049-550, Teresina, PI, Brazil

    Francisco W. S. Lima

  3. Institute for Theoretical Physics, Cologne University, 50923, Köln, Germany

    Dietrich Stauffer

Authors
  1. Tarik Hadzibeganovic
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Francisco W. S. Lima
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Dietrich Stauffer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dietrich Stauffer.

Additional information

Communicated by D.P. Croft

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hadzibeganovic, T., Lima, F.W.S. & Stauffer, D. Benefits of memory for the evolution of tag-based cooperation in structured populations. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 68, 1059–1072 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1718-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1718-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation