Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Collective action in the fraternal transitions

  • Published:
Biology & Philosophy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Inclusive fitness theory was not originally designed to explain the major transitions in evolution, but there is a growing consensus that it has the resources to do so. My aim in this paper is to highlight, in a constructive spirit, the puzzles and challenges that remain. I first consider the distinctive aspects of the cooperative interactions we see within the most complex social groups in nature: multicellular organisms and eusocial insect colonies. I then focus on one aspect in particular: the extreme redundancy these societies exhibit. I argue that extreme redundancy poses a distinctive explanatory puzzle for inclusive fitness theory, and I offer a potential solution which casts coercion as the key enabler. I suggest that the general moral to draw from the case is one of guarded optimism: while inclusive fitness is a powerful tool for understanding evolutionary transitions, it must be integrated within a broader framework that recognizes the distinctive problems such transitions present and the distinctive mechanisms by which these problems may be overcome.

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

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Here, and in the rest of the paper, I use ‘cooperation’ to denote any behaviour that confers an absolute fitness benefit on a social partner, and I reserve ‘altruism’ to denote any cooperative behaviour that also imposes an absolute fitness cost on the actor. This is in line with standard usage (see Hamilton 1964; Trivers 1985; Bourke and Franks 1995; West et al. 2007; Bourke 2011).

  2. See also Maynard Smith and Szathmary (1995); Queller (1997, 2000); Strassmann and Queller (2007); Queller and Strassmann (2009).

  3. Suppose, for instance, that every contribution is needed for the completion of the task, so that B* = 0 and B − B* = B. On this measure, the benefit conferred is nB, but the benefit received is only B.

  4. Here is one possibility: each actor contributes a share weighted by the relative difference their contribution makes to the total benefit. Formally, let b i represent the benefit conferred by the ith individual and let \( B_{i}^{*} \) represent the total benefit that would have been conferred had that individual unilaterally defected. The proposal is that:

    $$ b_{i} = \frac{B}{n} \cdot \frac{{B - B_{i}^{*} }}{{\sum\nolimits_{i}^{n} {\left( {B - B_{i}^{*} } \right)} }} $$

    This measure lacks the obvious defects of the simpler measures, but more work is needed to show that it provides a useful decomposition of the overall benefit for the purpose of understanding the relevant evolutionary dynamics. For instance, does Hamilton’s rule still apply when benefit is calculated using this measure? I will not undertake this work here, since it is peripheral to the overall argument.

  5. Because specialization may be regarded as a kind of correlation, we can quantify the overall degree of specialization in a social group using information theory (see Gorelick et al. 2004). It is thus perhaps the only aspect of social complexity for which a reasonably straightforward quantitative measure is available.

  6. See Calcott (2008) for a discussion of various ways in which cooperation may generate benefit for group living over social living. One of these ways, “reducing risk”, can be viewed as a form of redundancy; see below.

  7. Redundancy is also present to a significant degree within the genome, but I will not pursue this interesting analogy here (see, e.g., Thomas 1993, Nowak et al. 1997).

  8. A collective action problem, thus construed, is equivalent to a public goods dilemma (or ‘free-rider problem’) in which the ‘public good’ is, somewhat counterintuitively, the probability that the relevant task is completed.

  9. In this subsection I draw on the formal treatment of collective action problems in Medina (2007).

  10. In complex societies, the probability of task completion is likely to depend on numerous variables, not just on the overall degree of participation. For current purposes, however, we can assume that all these variables are held fixed, so that the overall degree of participation is the only factor that influences the probability of success. For simplicity, I treat B and c as constants, but in reality both may vary between agents.

  11. When individuals are unrelated and policing behaviour imposes a cost on the actor, there is an incentive not to police: the result is a ‘second-order free-rider problem’ (Heckathorn 1989). Though this presents a major difficulty in human contexts, such a problem seems unlikely to arise in the context of the social insects, since policing plausibly confers both direct and indirect fitness benefits.

  12. I borrow the notion of “social niche construction” from Powers et al. (2011) who apply it in a rather different context.

References

  • Anderson C, Franks NR (2001) Teams in animal societies. Behav Ecol 12:534–540

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson C, McShea DW (2001) Individual versus social complexity, with particular reference to ant colonies. Biol Rev 76:211–237

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson C, Franks NR, McShea DW (2001) The complexity and hierarchical structure of tasks in insect societies. Anim Behav 62:643–651

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonner JT (1988) The evolution of complexity by means of natural selection. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourke AFG (2011) Principles of social evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourke AFG, Franks NR (1995) Social evolution in ants. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Buss LW (1987) The evolution of individuality. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Calcott B (2008) The other cooperation problem: generating benefit. Biol Philos 23:179–203

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clarke E (2011) Plant individuality and multilevel selection theory. In: Calcott B, Sterelny K (eds) The major transitions in evolution revisited. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 227–250

    Google Scholar 

  • Dowding K (2005) Is it rational to vote? Five types of answer and a suggestion. Brit J Polit Int Rel 7:442–459

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Downs A (1957) An economic theory of democracy. Harper and Row, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Feddersen TJ (2004) Rational choice theory and the paradox of not voting. J Econ Perspect 18:99–112

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frank SA (1994) Kin selection and virulence in the evolution of protocells and parasites. Proc R Soc B 258:153–161

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gardner A, West SA, Wild G (2011) The genetical theory of kin selection. J Evol Biol 24(5):1020–1043

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Godfrey-Smith P (2009) Darwinian populations and natural selection. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Gorelick R, Bertram SM, Killeen PR, Fewell JH (2004) Normalized mutual entropy in biology: quantifying division of labour. Am Nat 164:677–682

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guerrero AA (2010) The paradox of voting and the ethics of political representation. Philos Public Aff 38:272–306

    Article  Google Scholar 

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

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton WD (1970) Selfish and spiteful behaviour in an evolutionary model. Nature 228:1218–1220

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hardin R (1971) Collective action as an agreeable n-prisoners’ dilemma. Behav Sci 16:472–481

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hardin R (1982) Collective action. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

    Google Scholar 

  • Heckathorn DD (1989) Collective action and the second-order free-rider problem. Ration Soc 1:78–100

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herbers JM (1981) Reliability theory and foraging by ants. J Theor Biol 89:175–189

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hölldobler B, Wilson EO (1990) The ants. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Kagel JH, Roth AE (1995) The handbook of experimental economics. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Maynard Smith J (1982) Evolution and the theory of games. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Maynard Smith J, Szathmary E (1995) The major transitions in evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Medina LF (2007) A unified theory of collective action and social change. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor

    Google Scholar 

  • Michod RE (1983) Population biology of the first replicators: on the origin of the genotype, phenotype and organism. Am Zool 23:5–14

    Google Scholar 

  • Michod RE (1999) Darwinian dynamics: evolutionary transitions in fitness and individuality. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Michod RE (2007) Evolution of individuality during the transition from unicellular to multicellular life. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:8613–8618

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Michod RE, Herron MD (2006) Cooperation and conflict during evolutionary transitions in individuality. J Evol Biol 19:1406–1409

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mirenda JT, Vinson SB (1981) Division of labour and specification of castes in the red imported fire ant Solenopsis Invicta Buren. Anim Behav 29:411–420

    Article  Google Scholar 

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

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nowak MA, Boerlijst MC, Cooke J, Maynard Smith J (1997) Evolution of genetic redundancy. Nature 388:167–171

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Odling-Smee JF, Laland KN, Feldman MW (2003) Niche construction: the neglected process in evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Olson M (1965) The logic of collective action: public goods and the theory of groups. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Oster GF, Wilson EO (1978) Caste and ecology in the social insects. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Powers ST, Penn AS, Watson RA (2011) The concurrent evolution of cooperation and the population structures that support it. Evolution 65:1527–1543

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Queller DC (1997) Cooperators since life began. Q Rev Biol 72:184–188

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Queller DC (2000) Relatedness and the fraternal major transitions. Philos Trans R Soc B 364:3142–3155

    Google Scholar 

  • Queller DC, Strassmann JE (1998) Kin selection and social insects. Bioscience 48:165–175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Queller DC, Strassmann JE (2009) Beyond sociality: the evolution of organismality. Philos Trans R Soc B 355:1647–1655

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ratnieks FLW (1988) Reproductive harmony via mutual policing by workers in eusocial Hymenoptera. Am Nat 132:217–236

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ratnieks FLW, Anderson C (1999) Task partitioning in insect societies. Insect Soc 46:95–108

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ratnieks FLW, Wenseleers T (2008) Altruism in insect societies and beyond: voluntary or enforced? Trends Ecol Evol 23:45–52

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ratnieks FLW, Foster KR, Wenseleers T (2006) Conflict resolution in insect societies. Annu Rev Entomol 51:581–608

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reeve HK, Jeanne RL (2003) From individual control to majority rule: extending transactional models of reproductive skew in animal societies. Proc R Soc B 270:1041–1045

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Strassmann JE, Queller DC (2007) Insect societies as divided organisms: the complexities of purpose and cross-purpose. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:8619–8626

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Strassmann JE, Queller DC (2010) The social organism: congresses, parties and committees. Evolution 64:605–616

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Szathmáry E, Maynard Smith J (1997) From replicators to reproducers: the first major transitions leading to life. J Theor Biol 187:555–571

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor C, Nowak MA (2007) Transforming the dilemma. Evolution 61:2281–2292

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thomas JH (1993) Thinking about genetic redundancy. Trends Genet 9:395–399

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trivers RL (1985) Social evolution. Benjamin/Cummings, Menlo Park

    Google Scholar 

  • West SA, Griffin AS, Gardner A (2007) Social semantics: altruism, cooperation, mutualism, strong reciprocity and group selection. J Evol Biol 20:415–432

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • West-Eberhard MJ (1975) The evolution of social behavior by kin selection. Q Rev Biol 50:1–33

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I thank Tim Lewens, Kevin Brosnan, Andrew Bourke, Brett Calcott, Ellen Clarke, Patrick Forber, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Andrew Hamilton, Rufus Johnstone, Ben Kerr, Arnon Levy, Jason Noble, Samir Okasha, Cedric Paternotte, Paul Ryan, Denis Walsh, Joeri Witteveen and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and discussion, and I thank audiences at the IHPST (Paris), the University of Bristol and the University of Utah. This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK

    Jonathan Birch

Authors
  1. Jonathan Birch
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonathan Birch.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Birch, J. Collective action in the fraternal transitions. Biol Philos 27, 363–380 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-012-9312-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-012-9312-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation