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- ISBN: 9780262018531 | 0262018535
- Cover: Hardcover
- Copyright: 2/22/2013
This collection reports on the latest research on an increasingly pivotal issue forevolutionary biology: cooperation. The chapters are written from a variety of disciplinaryperspectives and utilize research tools that range from empirical survey to conceptual modeling,reflecting the rich diversity of work in the field. They explore a wide taxonomic range,concentrating on bacteria, social insects, and, especially, humans. Part I ("Agents andEnvironments") investigates the connections of social cooperation in social organizations tothe conditions that make cooperation profitable and stable, focusing on the interactions of agent,population, and environment. Part II ("Agents and Mechanisms") focuses on how proximatemechanisms emerge and operate in the evolutionary process and how they shape evolutionarytrajectories. Throughout the book, certain themes emerge that demonstrate the ubiquity of questionsregarding cooperation in evolutionary biology: the generation and division of the profits ofcooperation; transitions in individuality; levels of selection, from gene to organism; and the"human cooperation explosion" that makes our own social behavior particularly puzzlingfrom an evolutionary perspective.