The altruistic side of aggressive greed
KNOXVILLE – In many group-living species, high-rank individuals bully their group-mates to get what they want, but their contribution is key to success in conflict with other groups, according to a study that sheds new light on the evolutionary roots of cooperation and group conflict.
In a series of mathematical models, researchers from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis and the University of Oxford uncovered a mechanism for explaining how between-group conflict influences within-group cooperation and how genes for this behavior might be ...