Collective Behavior and Social Evolution

Organizers:

Daniel Cooney (University of Pennsylvania, USA) & Olivia Chu (Princeton University, USA)

Description:

A common theme across ecology, evolutionary biology, and social science is the key role that individual-level competition and cooperation play in determining emergent phenomena at the population level. In this minisymposium, our speakers will explore how rules governing social interactions help to shape the structure of populations across a variety of systems, from the development of complex social networks and life-history strategies in animal groups to overcome the risk of infectious disease to the establishment of regulatory institutions and ideological echo chambers in human populations. Many of the talks will utilize the frameworks of evolutionary game theory and adaptive dynamics, modeling how natural selection or social learning can help shape the distribution of traits in populations over time, through genetic or cultural evolution. Mathematically, our session will feature a variety of approaches ranging from individual-based stochastic modeling to mean-field descriptions by ordinary and partial differential equations, demonstrating how collective phenomena can arise across scales of biological organization. In particular, we are hoping to bring together researchers from the dynamical systems, collective behavior, and evolutionary game theory communities to highlight common research themes and the wide range of biological settings that comprise the field of social evolution.