Exploring the Link between Genetic Relatedness r and Social Contact Structure k in Animal Social Networks.
Our understanding of how cooperation can arise in a population of selfish individuals has been greatly advanced by theory. More than one approach has been used to explore the effect of population structure. Inclusive fitness theory uses genetic relatedness r to express the role of population structure. Evolutionary graph theory models the evolution of cooperation on network structures and focuses on the number of interacting partners k as a quantity of interest. Here we use empirical data from a hierarchically structured animal contact network to examine the interplay between independent, measurable proxies for these key parameters. We find strong inverse correlations between estimates of r and k over three levels of social organization, suggesting that genetic relatedness and social contact structure capture similar structural information in a real population.
Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, 24306 Plön, Germany. jochen.wolf@ebc.uu.se
Jochen B W
JB
Wolf
Arne
A
Traulsen
Richard
R
James
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D019058:Community Networks; D005716:Game Theory; D056084:Genetic Fitness; D006608:Hierarchy, Social; D008954:Models, Biological; D046070:Sea Lions / Q000235:genetics* / Q000523:psychology; D012641:Selection, Genetic