Emergent kin selection of altruistic feeding via non-episodic neuroevolution

Bibliographic Details
Title: Emergent kin selection of altruistic feeding via non-episodic neuroevolution
Authors: Taylor-Davies, Max, Hamon, Gautier, Boulet, Timothé, Moulin-Frier, Clément
Publication Year: 2024
Collection: Computer Science
Quantitative Biology
Subject Terms: Quantitative Biology - Populations and Evolution, Computer Science - Neural and Evolutionary Computing
More Details: Kin selection theory has proven to be a popular and widely accepted account of how altruistic behaviour can evolve under natural selection. Hamilton's rule, first published in 1964, has since been experimentally validated across a range of different species and social behaviours. In contrast to this large body of work in natural populations, however, there has been relatively little study of kin selection \emph{in silico}. In the current work, we offer what is to our knowledge the first demonstration of kin selection emerging naturally within a population of agents undergoing continuous neuroevolution. Specifically, we find that zero-sum transfer of resources from parents to their infant offspring evolves through kin selection in environments where it is hard for offspring to survive alone. In an additional experiment, we show that kin selection in our simulations relies on a combination of kin recognition and population viscosity. We believe that our work may contribute to the understanding of kin selection in minimal evolutionary systems, without explicit notions of genes and fitness maximisation.
Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures
Document Type: Working Paper
Access URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10536
Accession Number: edsarx.2411.10536
Database: arXiv
More Details
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