Relatedness influences signal reliability in evolving robots.
Communication is an indispensable component of animal societies, yet many open questions remain regarding the factors affecting the evolution and reliability of signalling systems. A potentially important factor is the level of genetic relatedness between signallers and receivers. To quantitatively explore the role of relatedness in the evolution of reliable signals, we conducted artificial evolution over 500 generations in a system of foraging robots that can emit and perceive light signals. By devising a quantitative measure of signal reliability, and comparing independently evolving populations differing in within-group relatedness, we show a strong positive correlation between relatedness and reliability. Unrelated robots produced unreliable signals, whereas highly related robots produced signals that reliably indicated the location of the food source and thereby increased performance. Comparisons across populations also revealed that the frequency for signal production-which is often used as a proxy of signal reliability in empirical studies on animal communication-is a poor predictor of signal reliability and, accordingly, is not consistently correlated with group performance. This has important implications for our understanding of signal evolution and the empirical tools that are used to investigate communication.
Mitri
Sara
S
Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL, Station 11, Switzerland. sara.mitri@a3.epfl.ch
Floreano
Dario
D
Keller
Laurent
L
D000819:Animal Communication; D000818:Animals; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D012371:Robotics / Q000379:methods*; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Sep 15;106(37):15786-90
19805224
PLoS Biol. 2005 Apr;3(4):e137
15819608
J Evol Biol. 2008 Mar;21(2):387-95
18205776
Curr Biol. 2007 Mar 20;17(6):514-9
17320390
Am Nat. 2007 Dec;170(6):916-30
18171173
Evolution. 2007 Mar;61(3):530-45
17348918
J Theor Biol. 1975 Sep;53(1):205-14
1195756
C R Biol. 2003 Jul;326(7):677-86
14556387
J Evol Biol. 2007 Mar;20(2):415-32
17305808
J Theor Biol. 1992 May 21;156(2):215-34
1640723
J Evol Biol. 2006 Sep;19(5):1365-76
16910958
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1998 Apr 28;95(9):5100-5
9560235
Nat Rev Microbiol. 2006 Apr;4(4):249-58
16501584
J Theor Biol. 1964 Jul;7(1):1-16
5875341
Proc Biol Sci. 2009 Jun 7;276(1664):2117-23
19324749