Self-recognition, color signals, and cycles of greenbeard mutualism and altruism
Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: Altruism presents a challenge to evolutionary theory because selection should favor selfish over caring strategies. Greenbeard altruism resolves this paradox by allowing cooperators to identify individuals carrying similar alleles producing a form of genic selection. In side-blotched lizards, genetically similar but unrelated blue male morphs settle on adjacent territories and cooperate. Here we show that payoffs of cooperation depend on asymmetric costs of orange neighbors. One blue male experiences low fitness and buffers his unrelated partner from aggressive orange males despite the potential benefits of defection. We show that recognition behavior is highly heritable in nature, and we map genetic factors underlying color and self-recognition behavior of genetic similarity in both sexes. Recognition and cooperation arise from genome-wide factors based on our mapping study of the location of genes responsible for self-recognition behavior, recognition of blue color, and the color locus. Our results provide an example of greenbeard interactions in a vertebrate that are typified by cycles of greenbeard mutualism interspersed with phases of transient true altruism. Such cycles provide a mechanism encouraging the origin and stability of true altruism.
Institutions: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, University of California, Santa Cruz, Evolution et Diversité Biologique, University of California, Los Angeles, Montclair State University, Michigan State University, Yale University, Santa Fe Institute, Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier, Université Montpellier 2
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2132484733