Evolving Social Behavior in Adverse Environments

Cooperative behaviors are pervasive in the natural world. How organisms evolve stable cooperative strategies, specifically how selection can favor such costly behaviors, is a difficult problem for which several theories exist. In this work, we use digital evolution to explore the evolution of the production of a public resource that enables populations of organisms to survive in an adverse environment. Kin selection and limited dispersal are shown to promote cooperative acts, and evolved organisms stave off invasion by cheaters and survive in increasingly-adverse environments. Further, we observe how populations react to the disappearance and later re-emergence of adversity in the environment.