Abstract
Animals often use social information about conspecifics in making decisions about cooperation and conflict. While the importance of kin selection in the evolution of intraspecific cooperation and conflict is widely acknowledged, few studies have examined how relatedness influences the evolution of social information use. Here we specifically examine how relatedness affects the evolution of a stylised form of social information use known as eavesdropping. Eavesdropping involves individuals escalating conflicts with rivals observed to have lost their last encounter and avoiding fights with those seen to have won. We use a game theoretical model to examine how relatedness affects the evolution of eavesdropping, both when strategies are discrete and when they are continuous or mixed. We show that relatedness influences the evolution of eavesdropping, such that information use peaks at intermediate relatedness. Our study highlights the importance of considering kin selection when exploring the evolution of complex forms of information use.
Highlights
Animals frequently rely on information about conspecifics in making decisions regarding mate choice, cooperation or conflicts over resources [1,2,3]
Individuals react to observed cooperation between others by offering help to partners that were previously seen helping others, and refusing help to partners that were unhelpful [8]
A similar situation occurs in eavesdropping, where individuals observe conflicts and use this information by fighting individuals that lost their last encounter and avoiding fights with individuals that won [7]. This type of social information use has been demonstrated in animals (e.g. [9]) and represents a heuristic that may improve an individual’s expected outcome from an interaction, but with smaller investments in cognitive capacity and information-gathering than more accurate decision rules, such as full Bayesian updating over a series of interactions
Summary
Animals frequently rely on information about conspecifics in making decisions regarding mate choice, cooperation or conflicts over resources [1,2,3]. In contrast to the model of Johnstone [7], the discrete strategies model with relatedness can produce lower frequencies of individual aggression (i.e. hawk actions) and escalated conflict (i.e. hawk-hawk encounters) than the model without eavesdropping.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
