Bristol & Exeter Theory Group Talk

If you’re interested in evolution, game theory, animal behaviour, intergroup conflict, or whether dictatorships are more likely to go to war, join author Dan Sankey who will be talking about his recent Nature Communications modelling paper ‘The evolution of democratic peace in animal societies'. 

Intergroup conflict and cooperation are not phenomena unique to humans. Evolutionary game theory has the potential to unify our understanding of intergroup conflict across taxa. However, groups are still mostly treated as cohesive units that agree about appropriate strategy. This does not cohere with the intrinsic heterogeneity of animal groups, which differ in: 

• Incentives (some individuals gain more from conflict)
• Influence (some individuals have a greater say over the group's decision to fight or flee) 

Here, we applied a Hawk-Dove model, in heterogeneous groups, finding support for the "democratic peace" hypothesis (more peaceful interactions evolve when decisions are shared). 

Join on Teams: tinyurl.com/animal-democracy