Overestimating Resource Value and Its Effects on Fighting Decisions

Much work in behavioral ecology has shown that animals fight over resources such as food, and that they make strategic decisions about when to engage in such fights. Here, we examine the evolution of one, heretofore unexamined, component of that strategic decision about whether to fight for a resource. We present the results of a computer simulation that examined the evolution of over- or underestimating the value of a resource (food) as a function of an individual's current hunger level. In our model, animals fought for food when they perceived their current food level to be below the mean for the environment. We considered seven strategies for estimating food value: 1) always underestimate food value, 2) always overestimate food value, 3) never over- or underestimate food value, 4) overestimate food value when hungry, 5) underestimate food value when hungry, 6) overestimate food value when relatively satiated, and 7) underestimate food value when relatively satiated. We first competed all seven strategies against each other when they began at approximately equal frequencies. In such a competition, two strategies–“always overestimate food value,” and “overestimate food value when hungry”–were very successful. We next competed each of these strategies against the default strategy of “never over- or underestimate,” when the default strategy was set at 99% of the population. Again, the strategies of “always overestimate food value” and “overestimate food value when hungry” fared well. Our results suggest that overestimating food value when deciding whether to fight should be favored by natural selection

Notas para uma aproximação entre o neodarwinismo e as ciências sociais Notes on an approximation between neo-Darwinism and the social sciences

O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar a psicologia evolutiva, uma ciência que procura compreender a mente humana (cultural, social, histórica) como produto de processos biológicos e evolutivos, e a memética, uma teoria ainda incipiente que pretende tratar a informação cultural e as próprias tradições como complexos de idéias, que usam os cérebros humanos para se reproduzirem. Essas duas novas abordagens pretendem contribuir para integrar as ciências biológicas e as ciências sociais.<br>Evolutionary psychology is a science that endeavors to understand the human mind (cultural, social, historical) as a product of biological and evolutionary processes. Memetics is an incipient theory that views cultural information and traditions as sets of ideas that reproduce themselves within the human brain. The article introduces these two new approaches and explores how they intend to contribute to the integration of the biological and social sciences

Teaching Bioeconomics

Bioeconomics is a relatively young field that uses an expanded microeconomics to examine animal behavior, human behavior, and animal and human social institutions. A voluminous literature is rapidly accumulating. There are as yet no standard textbooks, but there are several excellent books and/or articles that can be used in combination with videos and other aids to make a course that students will enjoy and that teachers can use to advance the frontiers of scholarship in economics and biology. Copyright Springer 2005altruism, conflict, cooperation, evolution, game theory, institutions, rationality,