MEETING: The Developmental and Proximate Mechanisms Causing Individual Variation in Cooperative Behavior (SICB Symposium, January 8, 2017 in New Orleans, LA)

Columbia University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Animals spend much of their time interacting socially with members of their own species. Forms of animal social behavior range from courtship, mating, and parental care behaviors, to more complex coordinated and cooperative behavior among related or unrelated individuals in group-living species. The evolutionary causes and consequences of such cooperative behavior have been a focus of biological research for nearly two centuries. A number of theoretical models such as those based upon reciprocal cooperation or shared genetic interests predict the conditions under which cooperation is likely to evolve. Although these models have resulted in productive research paradigms that have shaped the formal study of animal behavior for the last half century, recent models suggest that the evolution of cooperation is also heavily influenced by the degree of individual variation in cooperative behavior as well as the underlying developmental and proximate mechanisms. Individual variation in cooperative behavior and the mechanisms underlying it are not only understudied by empiricists, but also studied in isolation, despite their potential importance for the evolution of cooperation and social organization. The goal of this symposium to be held at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology is to produce a road map to study the developmental and proximate mechanisms in generating individual variation in cooperative behavior. The symposium will bring together senior and junior researchers from across a range of disciplines and also hold a joint session for students. The primary aim of this symposium will be to establish new research avenues to study variation in cooperation using both mechanistic and evolutionary explanations. At the conclusion of the symposium, a series of papers will be published as a special issue in the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology, including a synthesis of the main emergent themes from this symposium that will help to establish future research avenues to study the causes and consequences of individual variation in cooperative behavior.