How to Build a Domesticated Fox: The Start of a Long Journey

In 1959, outside of Novosibirsk, Siberia, Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut began what remains one of the longest-running experiments in biology. For the last 59 years they have been domesticating silver foxes and studying evolution in real time. Belyaev died in 1985, but Trut has continued to lead this experiment up to this very day. Each generation they and their team have been selecting the calmest, most prosocial-toward-humans foxes and preferentially breeding those individuals. Today they have foxes that are calmer than lap dogs, and who also look eerily dog-like—floppy ears, wagging tail and all. Belyaev and Trut’s results have fundamentally changed how we think of the process of domestication: to enumerate all their findings and discuss their importance would require a book, which is why Lyudmila Trut (now 84 years old) and I wrote How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog)

Empathy in Nonhumans: A Brief Overview

We present a brief overview of the study of empathy in nonhumans.  We begin with a historical perspective that focuses on early ideas about empathy developed by Peter Kropotkin and Adam Smith. From there we discuss the origin and evolution of the multiple layers of empathy—emotional contagion,  sympathetic concern, and empathetic perspective-taking—casting that discussion within the “Russian doll model” of empathy developed by de Waal. For each layer we provide examples from the animal behavior literature

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

Cheating on the Edge

We present the results of an individual agent-based model of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Our model examines antibiotic resistance when two strategies exist: “producers”–who secrete a substance that breaks down antibiotics–and nonproducers (“cheats”) who do not secrete, or carry the machinery associated with secretion. The model allows for populations of up to 10,000, in which bacteria are affected by their nearest neighbors, and we assume cheaters die when there are no producers in their neighborhood. Each of 10,000 slots on our grid (a torus) could be occupied by a producer or a nonproducer, or could (temporarily) be unoccupied. The most surprising and dramatic result we uncovered is that when producers and nonproducers coexist at equilibrium, nonproducers are almost always found on the edges of clusters of producers

Coevolutionary games - a mini review

Prevalence of cooperation within groups of selfish individuals is puzzling in that it contradicts with the basic premise of natural selection. Favoring players with higher fitness, the latter is key for understanding the challenges faced by cooperators when competing with defectors. Evolutionary game theory provides a competent theoretical framework for addressing the subtleties of cooperation in such situations, which are known as social dilemmas. Recent advances point towards the fact that the evolution of strategies alone may be insufficient to fully exploit the benefits offered by cooperative behavior. Indeed, while spatial structure and heterogeneity, for example, have been recognized as potent promoters of cooperation, coevolutionary rules can extend the potentials of such entities further, and even more importantly, lead to the understanding of their emergence. The introduction of coevolutionary rules to evolutionary games implies, that besides the evolution of strategies, another property may simultaneously be subject to evolution as well. Coevolutionary rules may affect the interaction network, the reproduction capability of players, their reputation, mobility or age. Here we review recent works on evolutionary games incorporating coevolutionary rules, as well as give a didactic description of potential pitfalls and misconceptions associated with the subject. In addition, we briefly outline directions for future research that we feel are promising, thereby particularly focusing on dynamical effects of coevolutionary rules on the evolution of cooperation, which are still widely open to research and thus hold promise of exciting new discoveries.Comment: 24 two-column pages, 10 figures; accepted for publication in BioSystem

The Influence of Life History Milestones and Association Networks on Crop-Raiding Behavior in Male African Elephants

Factors that influence learning and the spread of behavior in wild animal populations are important for understanding species responses to changing environments and for species conservation. In populations of wildlife species that come into conflict with humans by raiding cultivated crops, simple models of exposure of individual animals to crops do not entirely explain the prevalence of crop raiding behavior. We investigated the influence of life history milestones using age and association patterns on the probability of being a crop raider among wild free ranging male African elephants; we focused on males because female elephants are not known to raid crops in our study population. We examined several features of an elephant association network; network density, community structure and association based on age similarity since they are known to influence the spread of behaviors in a population. We found that older males were more likely to be raiders than younger males, that males were more likely to be raiders when their closest associates were also raiders, and that males were more likely to be raiders when their second closest associates were raiders older than them. The male association network had sparse associations, a tendency for individuals similar in age and raiding status to associate, and a strong community structure. However, raiders were randomly distributed between communities. These features of the elephant association network may limit the spread of raiding behavior and likely determine the prevalence of raiding behavior in elephant populations. Our results suggest that social learning has a major influence on the acquisition of raiding behavior in younger males whereas life history factors are important drivers of raiding behavior in older males. Further, both life-history and network patterns may influence the acquisition and spread of complex behaviors in animal populations and provide insight on managing human-wildlife conflict

Physiological Correlates of Volunteering

We review research on physiological correlates of volunteering, a neglected but promising research field. Some of these correlates seem to be causal factors influencing volunteering. Volunteers tend to have better physical health, both self-reported and expert-assessed, better mental health, and perform better on cognitive tasks. Research thus far has rarely examined neurological, neurochemical, hormonal, and genetic correlates of volunteering to any significant extent, especially controlling for other factors as potential confounds. Evolutionary theory and behavioral genetic research suggest the importance of such physiological factors in humans. Basically, many aspects of social relationships and social activities have effects on health (e.g., Newman and Roberts 2013; Uchino 2004), as the widely used biopsychosocial (BPS) model suggests (Institute of Medicine 2001). Studies of formal volunteering (FV), charitable giving, and altruistic behavior suggest that physiological characteristics are related to volunteering, including specific genes (such as oxytocin receptor [OXTR] genes, Arginine vasopressin receptor [AVPR] genes, dopamine D4 receptor [DRD4] genes, and 5-HTTLPR). We recommend that future research on physiological factors be extended to non-Western populations, focusing specifically on volunteering, and differentiating between different forms and types of volunteering and civic participation