Rank vs. share of reproduction, see paper for detailed caption information

In many group-living species, high-ranking 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 new study that sheds new light on the evolutionary roots of cooperation and group conflict.

SFI Omidyar Fellow alum Laura Fortunato, now an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at the University of Oxford, co-authored the paper with Sergey Gavrilets of the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NMBioS).

In a series of mathematical models, the researchers uncovered a mechanism for explaining how between-group conflict influences within-group cooperation and how genes for this behavior might be maintained in the population by natural selection. 

Read the open access paper in Nature Communications (March 26, 2014)

Read the NIMBioS news release (March 26, 2014)