Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Altruism through beard chromodynamics

Nature volume 440, pages 663–666 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

The evolution of altruism, a behaviour that benefits others at one's own fitness expense, poses a darwinian paradox. The paradox is resolved if many interactions are with related individuals so that the benefits of altruism are reaped by copies of the altruistic gene in other individuals1, a mechanism called kin selection2. However, recognition of altruists could provide an alternative route towards the evolution of altruism1,3,4,5. Arguably the simplest recognition system is a conspicuous, heritable tag, such as a green beard1,3. Despite the fact that such genes have been reported6,7,8, the ‘green beard effect’3 has often been dismissed because it is unlikely that a single gene can code for altruism and a recognizable tag1,3,9. Here we model the green beard effect and find that if recognition and altruism are always inherited together, the dynamics are highly unstable, leading to the loss of altruism. In contrast, if the effect is caused by loosely coupled separate genes, altruism is facilitated through beard chromodynamics in which many beard colours co-occur. This allows altruism to persist even in weakly structured populations and implies that the green beard effect, in the form of a fluid association of altruistic traits with a recognition tag, can be much more prevalent than hitherto assumed.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: The level of cooperation in the population in the approach to the heteroclinic cycle.
Figure 2: Evolution of cooperation and beard colour diversity.
Figure 3: An example of a snapshot of spatial beard chromodynamics.
Figure 4: Cooperation and diversity versus viscosity.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Hamilton, W. D. The genetic evolution of social behaviour, II. J. Theor. Biol. 7, 17–52 (1964)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Maynard Smith, J. Group selection and kin selection. Nature 201, 1145–1147 (1964)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Dawkins, R. The Selfish Gene (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1976)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Dawkins, R. The Extended Phenotype (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1982)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Riolo, R., Cohen, M. D. & Axelrod, R. Evolution of cooperation without reciprocity. Nature 414, 441–443 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Queller, D. C., Ponte, E., Bozzaro, S. & Strassmann, J. E. Single-gene greenbeard effects in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. Science 299, 105–106 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Keller, L. & Ross, K. G. Selfish genes: a green beard in the red fire ant. Nature 394, 573–575 (1998)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Summers, K. & Crespi, B. Cadherins in maternal-foetal interactions: red queen with a green beard? Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 272, 643–649 (2005)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Blaustein, A. R. Kin recognition mechanisms—phenotypic matching or recognition alleles. Am. Nat. 121, 749–754 (1983)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Trivers, R. The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Q. Rev. Biol. 46, 35–57 (1971)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Van Baalen, M. & Rand, D. The unit of selection in viscous populations and the evolution of altruism. J. Theor. Biol. 193, 631–648 (1998)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Nowak, M. A. & May, R. M. Evolutionary games and spatial chaos. Nature 355, 826–829 (1992)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  13. West, S. A., Pen, I. & Griffin, A. S. Conflict and cooperation—Cooperation and competition between relatives. Science 296, 72–75 (2000)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  14. Hamilton, W. D. in Kin Recognition in Animals (eds Fletcher, D. J. C. & Michener, C. D.) 417–438 (Wiley, Chichester, 1987)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Haig, D. Gestational drive and the green-bearded placenta. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 93, 6547–6551 (1996)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Van Baalen, M. & Jansen, V. A. A. Common language or Tower of Babel? On the evolutionary dynamics of signals and their meanings. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 270, 69–76 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Axelrod, R., Hammond, R. A. & Grafen, A. Altruism via kin-selection strategies that rely on arbitrary tags with which they coevolve. Evolution 58, 1833–1838 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Haig, D. in Behavioural Ecology 4th edn (eds Krebs, J. R. & Davies, N. B.) 284–306 (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1997)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Axelrod, R. The Evolution of Cooperation (Basic Books, New York, 1984)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  20. Hofbauer, J. & Sigmund, K. Evolutionary Games and Population Dynamics (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1998)

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank P. Credland for his encouragement and comments on the manuscript. Author Contributions Both authors contributed equally to this paper. V.A.A.J. formulated and analysed the mathematical model; M.v.B. formulated and analysed the simulation model.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London, TW20 0EX, Surrey, Egham, UK

    Vincent A. A. Jansen

  2. Laboratoire d'Ecologie ENS/UPMC/CNRS, UMR 7625, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Bâtiment A, 7ème Etage, CC 237, 7 quai St Bernard, 75252, Paris, Cedex 05, France

    Minus van Baalen

Authors
  1. Vincent A. A. Jansen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Minus van Baalen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vincent A. A. Jansen.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

Reprints and permissions information is available at npg.nature.com/reprintsandpermissions. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Methods

This file contains additional details on the methods used in this study. (PDF 164 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Jansen, V., van Baalen, M. Altruism through beard chromodynamics. Nature 440, 663–666 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04387

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04387

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing