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Collective Behavior From Cells to Societies: Interdisciplinary Research Team Summaries (2015) / Chapter Skim
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IDR Team Summary 3: What proximate mechanisms underlie helping and cooperation?
Pages 35-42

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From page 35...
... that evolved among members of a closely related kin group may have easily expanded to include less related individuals. For example, phylogenetic studies have indicated that social behavior evolved under conditions in which groups were headed by singly mated females, and mat 35
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From page 36...
... (b)   Individualized cooperation: Species in which individuals recognize each other and build up a history of interaction known as "social relationships." Here we are concerned with individualized societies (e.g., mammals, birds, other vertebrates; de Waal & Tyack, 2003; also some invertebrates with individual recognition, such as paper wasps)
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From page 37...
... Without necessarily implying the cognitively advanced forms found in human adults (e.g., theory of mind) , the empathy explanation takes as its basis bodily connections, involuntary mimicry, and emotional contagion.
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From page 38...
... Primate ethologist and NAKFI Steering Committee member Frans de Waal challenged IDR Team 3 to find the very spark that ignites cooperation. This challenge is not just an exercise in scholarship, but may also provide fresh insights for the fields of behavioral economics, education, and artificial intelligence.
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From page 39...
... In a chess-like battle, miniature predator and prey robots co-evolved hunting and evasion tactics, while robots capable of autonomous design and fabrication adapted brain and structural morphologies to adapt to varied mechanical tasks. In 2006, Floreano joined forces with evolutionary entomologist Laurent Keller to challenge multiple kindred of genetically similar robots to collectively forage and transport food tokens.
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From page 40...
... IDR Team 3 hypothesized that the proximate elements below will provide a graded and interactive context for cooperation, whose relative strengths and effects can be directly tested. Environmental variability.
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From page 41...
... Moving forward, IDR Team 3 proposes to manipulate the proximate elements of cooperation as test parameters to determine their impact on simulated and robotic fitness in cooperative challenges including foraging and defense from variably sized and challenging intruders. As ATECH develops and evolves, IDR Team 3 intends to develop predictive models that can be tested on model organisms to predict cooperation in nature.
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Key Terms

  • evolutionary robotics
  • proximate mechanisms
  • team summary
  • genetically similar
  • fitness score

  • individual recognition
  • inclusive fitness
  • proximate elements
  • social interactions
  • environmental variability

  • shawn alter
  • waal fbm
  • artificial intelligence
  • maternal care
  • related kin

  • related individuals
  • evolutionary biology
  • evolutionary process
  • individual participants
  • evolutionary phenomena

  • evolutionary entomologist
  • collective fitness
  • individual fitness
  • robotic fitness
  • distributed fitness

  • mechanisms underlying
  • test evolutionary
  • similar robots
  • fitness scores
  • challenged idr


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