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Cooperation has been the key to success for many of Earth's species, from microbiota to humans. Despite the centrality of cooperation to so many liveways, there is still a great deal to be understood about its evolution and how and when it succeeds and fails. This collection pulls together content from the Nature Human Behaviour Focus issue on Cooperation - including insights from anthropology, evolutionary biology, human behavioural ecology, economics, neuroscience, psychology, ethology, and environmental studies - and from the archive of Nature Ecology & Evolution, to understand the state of knowledge on cooperation and highlight future research directions.
Human beings are a social species that relies on cooperation to survive and thrive. Understanding how and why cooperation succeeds or fails is integral to solving the many global challenges we face.