Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 280, Issue 1766, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2013.1475
Keywords
cooperation; reciprocal altruism; tit-for-tat; birds; Prisoner's Dilemma
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Funding
- Academy of Finland
- Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Latvia
- Science Council of Latvia
- Social Fund within the project 'Support for the implementation of doctoral studies at Daugavpils University' [2009/0140/1DP/1.1.2.1.2/09/IPIA/VIAA/015]
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Reciprocal altruism describes a situation in which an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, but there is an ultimate fitness benefit based on an expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time. It creates the obvious dilemma in which there is always a short-term benefit to cheating, therefore cooperating individuals must avoid being exploited by non-cooperating cheaters. This is achieved by following various decision rules, usually variants of the tit-for-tat (TFT) strategy. The strength of TFT, however, is also its weakness-mistakes in implementation or interpretation of moves, or the inability to cooperate, lead to a permanent breakdown in cooperation. We show that pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) use a TFT with an embedded 'excuse principle' to forgive the neighbours that were perceived as unable to cooperate during mobbing of predators. The excuse principle dramatically increases the stability of TFT-like behavioural strategies within the Prisoner's Dilemma game.
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