Trade-offs among complexity, regeneration and defector risk across fraternal cooperative organizations
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Fraternal cooperative organizations (FCOs), which encompass metazoan multicellularity and eusociality, rely on a division of labour among specialized members. I present a comprehensive framework to concretely classify FCO members by specialization, state transition and potency, which are associated with complexity, regeneration and defector susceptibility of the group. Across FCOs, specialization hinders plasticity, potency and regenerative capacity due to sophisticated fate-determination systems. In addition, such a sophisticated system is vulnerable to spontaneous malfunctions, generating dysfunctional or cheating group members (cancers or excessively produced queens) characterized by unregulated proliferation/reproduction. The framework explains why complex FCOs exhibit limited regeneration and why highly regenerative FCOs cannot become complex. As an exception, plants can be complex and regenerative owing to their structural robustness against cancer.
Source: Biology Letters
Author: Jibeom Choi
Institution: Korea Institute for Advanced Study
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7147649228