Social evolution articles from across Nature Portfolio

Short-lived online social network experiments show that making the in-game wealth of immediate neighbors invisible improves the subjective wellbeing (SWB) of poorer participants. This status invisibility reduced the strength of the positive association between in-game wealth and SWB in social networks. However, in real-world settings, status is often visible.

An agent-based model suggests that bacteria use direct-contact systems for inhibiting competitors when the attacking strain is outnumbered, and long-range diffusion systems when the attacker is common. These predictions are supported by competition experiments with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which also show that strains can use both types of system in conjunction.

Using two series of online experiments involving a public goods game and manipulation of wealth visibility, the authors show that invisible wealth achieved higher subjective well-being, particularly among poorer subjects leading to a reduction in the economic gradient in well-being.

The authors used multiple lines of evidence including behavioural assays, quantitative genetics and transcriptomics to explore schooling behaviour in guppies. Both genomic and transcriptomic analyses indicated that genes involved in neuron migration and synaptic function played key roles in the evolution of schooling behaviour.

Studies of the evolution of cooperation often assume information use that is inconsistent with empirical observations. Here, the authors’ research on general imitation dynamics reveals that cooperation is fostered by individuals using less personal information and more social information.

Animals differ remarkably in how parental care is distributed between the male and female parent. Here, the authors use evolutionary simulations to reveal that sex differences in care readily emerge in a characteristic manner that is not captured by current sex role theory.

Short-lived online social network experiments show that making the in-game wealth of immediate neighbors invisible improves the subjective wellbeing (SWB) of poorer participants. This status invisibility reduced the strength of the positive association between in-game wealth and SWB in social networks. However, in real-world settings, status is often visible.

Using genome assemblies and comparative analyses, we identified evolutionary signatures of selection associated with repeated gains and losses of social behaviour in sweat bees. These signatures include changes in regulatory regions and young genes, as well as complementary patterns of positive and relaxed selection on proteins involved in juvenile hormone signalling.

In social interactions, individuals are often tempted to ‘free ride’ (benefit without paying) on other group members’ contributions. A new mathematical framework suggests a strategy based on cumulative reciprocity that can help to sustain mutual cooperation.

Why do males typically compete more intensely for mating opportunities than do females and how does this relate to sex differences in gamete size? A new study provides a formal evolutionary link between gamete size dimorphism and ‘Bateman gradients’, which describe how much individuals of each sex benefit from additional matings.

Slow ecological cycles, resulting in the recurrent dispersal of cells between resource patches, can drive the evolution of collectivity.