4 research outputs found
Does defection during predator inspection affect social structure in wild shoals of guppies?
Reciprocal altruism has been proposed as a possible mechanism for the evolution of cooperative behaviour. However, very few investigations have tested predictions of reciprocity in wild animal populations. In the current investigation we simulated defection during predator inspection in a wild population of guppies, Poecilia reticulata. Two experiments were run: the first simulating defection during a single exposure to a predator and the second during multiple exposures to a predator. We then compared subsequent social and cooperative interactions with those observed prior to the treatments. From theory and previous experiments on cooperation and reciprocity, we predicted that defection would result in a reduction in social and cooperative interactions during subsequent predator inspections. However, our experiments did not find any effect of simulated defection(s) on the subsequent social structure, or on patterns of predator inspection behaviour. We discuss the potential reasons for the observed results and suggest future directions for research to address mechanisms underpinning the nature of cooperative interactions during predator inspection
Herding interactions as an opportunity to prevent extreme events in financial markets
A characteristic feature of complex systems in general is a tight coupling
between their constituent parts. In complex socio-economic systems this kind of
behavior leads to self-organization, which may be both desirable (e.g. social
cooperation) and undesirable (e.g. mass panic, financial "bubbles" or
"crashes"). Abundance of the empirical data as well as general insights into
the trading behavior enables the creation of simple agent-based models
reproducing sophisticated statistical features of the financial markets. In
this contribution we consider a possibility to prevent self-organized extreme
events in artificial financial market setup built upon a simple agent-based
herding model. We show that introduction of agents with predefined
fundamentalist trading behavior helps to significantly reduce the probability
of the extreme price fluctuations events. We also test random trading control
strategy, which was previously found to be promising, and find that its impact
on the market is rather ambiguous. Though some of the results indicate that it
might actually stabilize financial fluctuations.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure