Abstract
Most social interactions do not take place at random. In many situations, individuals choose their interaction partners on the basis of phenotypic cues. When this happens, individuals are often homophilic, that is, they tend to interact with individuals that are similar to them. Here we investigate the joint evolution of phenotypic cues and cue-dependent interaction strategies. By a combination of individual-based simulations and analytical arguments, we show that homophily evolves less easily than earlier studies suggest. The evolutionary interplay of cues and cue-based behaviour is intricate and has many interesting facets. For example, an interaction strategy like heterophily may stably persist in the population even if it is selected against in association with any particular cue. Homophily persisted for extensive periods of time just in those simulations where homophilic interactions provide a lower (rather than a higher) payoff than heterophilic interactions. Our results indicate that even the simplest cue-based social interactions can have rich dynamics and a surprising diversity of evolutionary outcomes.
Highlights
Most social interactions do not take place at random
We investigate the joint evolution of phenotypic cues and cue-dependent interaction strategies
By a combination of individual-based simulations and analytical arguments, we show that homophily evolves less than earlier studies suggest
Summary
Most social interactions do not take place at random. In many situations, individuals choose their interaction partners on the basis of phenotypic cues. It is perhaps not too surprising that social evolution takes a different course if agents can choose their interaction partners on the basis of their behavioural tendencies. Various models for the joint evolution of tags and tag-based behavioural strategies have been investigated[17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25] These models tend to make similar assumptions, the conclusions based on these models are often strikingly different[24,26]. The evolutionary dynamics of signalling systems can be quite intricate[36], in particular if the interests of senders and receivers are not fully congruent This is exemplified by non-equilibrium behaviour in sexual selection models[37,38] or the stable coexistence of multiple signal- and signal-response strategies in models for animal communication[39]
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