ABSTRACT PI: Dugatkin Proposal Number: The study of cooperative behavior is hardly a recent endeavor. Great thinkers - Aristotle, Hobbes, and Darwin, to name a few - have pondered over the existence of cooperation in both humans and non-human animals. Although there are many different categories of cooperative behavior, reciprocal altruism has received, by far, the most attention. In order to model reciprocity, researchers have adapted the mathematical theory of games and added an evolutionary element to this technique. It has, however, been difficult to test models of reciprocity . Part of the difficulty, no doubt, was finding a reasonable ecological scenario in which animals were hypothesized to use reciprocal altruism, and then devising controlled experiments to examine which strategies animals invoke in such systems. Without question predator inspection behavior has become the paradigmatic case for systematically examining reciprocity and the evolution of cooperation. Predator inspection in animals is essentially analogous to guard duty in the army and an ideal system within which to study cooperation. I will employ field studies, laboratory experiments, and the creation of new mathematical models to examine: 1) the costs of predator inspection and how such costs relate to reciprocity and the evolution of cooperation, 2) how assortative interactions favor the evolution of cooperation, 3) cultural transmission, predator inspection and the evolution of cooperation, and 4) the evolution of cooperation in large groups. An incorporation of 'natural selection thinking' into human behavioral experiments could have a large impact on studies of human cooperation. Before such bold statements can be supported, however, animal experiments should be undertaken to test evolutionary models of cooperation. If such experiments are successful, there is great reason for optimism with respect to human co operation, because strong precedence exists for incorporating evolutionary models designed to examine cooperation in non-humans into the human realm. The experiments I outlined above are the first step in this direction.
