Cooperation in defence against a predator

Abstract

The origin and the evolutionary stability of cooperation between unrelated individuals is one of the key problems of evolutionary biology. In this paper, a cooperative defence game against a predator is introduced which is based on Hamilton's selfish herd theory and Eshel's survival game models. Cooperation is altruistic in the sense that the individual, which is not the target of the predator, helps the members of the group attacked by the predator and during defensive action the helper individual may also die in any attack. In order to decrease the long term predation risk, this individual has to carry out a high risk action. Here I show that this kind of cooperative behaviour can evolve in small groups. The reason for the emergence of cooperation is that if the predator does not kill a mate of a cooperative individual, then the survival probability of the cooperative individual will increase in two cases. If the mate is non-cooperative, then—according to the dilution effect, the predator confusion effect and the higher predator vigilance—the survival probability of the cooperative individual increases. The second case is when the mate is cooperative, because a cooperative individual has a further gain, the active help in defence during further predator attacks. Thus, if an individual can increase the survival rate of its mates (no matter whether the mate is cooperative or not), then its own predation risk will decrease.