Why should you help a competitor? Why should you contribute to the public good if free
riders reap the benefits of your generosity? Cooperation in a competitive world is a …

Social organisation in animals takes many forms. It includes assemblages of territorial
animals, dominance hierarchies and social groups, among other things. The basic tenet that …

More than a century ago, William Morton Wheeler proposed that social insect colonies can
be regarded as superorganisms when they have morphologically differentiated reproductive …

Economic agents are not always rational or farsighted and can make decisions according to
simple behavioral rules that vary according to situation and can be studied using the tools of …

The last two decades have seen an explosion in research analysing cultural change as a
Darwinian evolutionary process. Here I provide an overview of the theory of cultural …

Samir Okasha approaches evolutionary biology from a philosophical perspective in Agents
and Goals in Evolution, analysing a mode of thinking in biology called agential thinking. He …

Comparative studies of social insects and birds show that the evolution of cooperative and
eusocial breeding systems has been confined to species where females mate completely or …

Since Hamilton published his seminal papers in 1964, our understanding of the importance
of cooperation for life on Earth has evolved beyond recognition. Early research was focused …