New preprint: Natural Selection for Collective Action

[Ben Allen]

Hello LEG community,

I would like to share a new preprint from my research team which may
be of interest, entitled "Natural Selection for Collective Action".
The preprint is available here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.14700

We use the term “collective action” to broadly refer to anything that
organisms do together---bacteria forming biofilms, ants building
“living bridges”, birds cooperatively raising young, lions hunting in
groups. This manuscript proposes a mathematical and conceptual
framework for how natural selection shapes the actions of collectives.
Our main result is a condition that determines whether a given
collective action is favored. In this condition, a collective's effect
on the fitness of each individual is weighted by the relatedness
between them, using a new measure of collective relatedness.

Under weak selection, this condition can be evaluated using coalescent
theory. We use this to conditions for the evolution of collective
action among siblings, on graphs, and on hypergraphs.

Intriguingly, our condition resembles an inclusive fitness summation,
except the “actor” is a collective, not an individual. This suggests a
new approach to the evolution of social behavior, in which collectives
can be considered actors with their own fitness interests. My hope is
that this conceptual reframing can make progress towards resolving the
long-running fight over inclusive fitness theory.

While this manuscript is under review, I would be very grateful for
any feedback from the LEG community!

All the best,
Ben Allen


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Ben Allen
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Emmanuel College
http://plektix.blogspot.com