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The Janus face of Darwinian competition

Without competition, organisms would not evolve any meaningful physical or cognitive abilities. Competition can thus be understood as the driving force behind Darwinian evolution. But does this imply that more competitive environments necessarily evolve organisms with more sophisticated cognitive ab...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hintze, Arend, Phillips, Nathaniel, Hertwig, Ralph
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4564810/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26354182
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep13662
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author Hintze, Arend
Phillips, Nathaniel
Hertwig, Ralph
author_facet Hintze, Arend
Phillips, Nathaniel
Hertwig, Ralph
author_sort Hintze, Arend
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description Without competition, organisms would not evolve any meaningful physical or cognitive abilities. Competition can thus be understood as the driving force behind Darwinian evolution. But does this imply that more competitive environments necessarily evolve organisms with more sophisticated cognitive abilities than do less competitive environments? Or is there a tipping point at which competition does more harm than good? We examine the evolution of decision strategies among virtual agents performing a repetitive sampling task in three distinct environments. The environments differ in the degree to which the actions of a competitor can affect the fitness of the sampling agent, and in the variance of the sample. Under weak competition, agents evolve decision strategies that sample often and make accurate decisions, which not only improve their own fitness, but are good for the entire population. Under extreme competition, however, the dark side of the Janus face of Darwinian competition emerges: Agents are forced to sacrifice accuracy for speed and are prevented from sampling as often as higher variance in the environment would require. Modest competition is therefore a good driver for the evolution of cognitive abilities and of the population as a whole, whereas too much competition is devastating.
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spelling pubmed-45648102015-09-15 The Janus face of Darwinian competition Hintze, Arend Phillips, Nathaniel Hertwig, Ralph Sci Rep Article Without competition, organisms would not evolve any meaningful physical or cognitive abilities. Competition can thus be understood as the driving force behind Darwinian evolution. But does this imply that more competitive environments necessarily evolve organisms with more sophisticated cognitive abilities than do less competitive environments? Or is there a tipping point at which competition does more harm than good? We examine the evolution of decision strategies among virtual agents performing a repetitive sampling task in three distinct environments. The environments differ in the degree to which the actions of a competitor can affect the fitness of the sampling agent, and in the variance of the sample. Under weak competition, agents evolve decision strategies that sample often and make accurate decisions, which not only improve their own fitness, but are good for the entire population. Under extreme competition, however, the dark side of the Janus face of Darwinian competition emerges: Agents are forced to sacrifice accuracy for speed and are prevented from sampling as often as higher variance in the environment would require. Modest competition is therefore a good driver for the evolution of cognitive abilities and of the population as a whole, whereas too much competition is devastating. Nature Publishing Group 2015-09-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4564810/ /pubmed/26354182 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep13662 Text en Copyright © 2015, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Hintze, Arend
Phillips, Nathaniel
Hertwig, Ralph
The Janus face of Darwinian competition
title The Janus face of Darwinian competition
title_full The Janus face of Darwinian competition
title_fullStr The Janus face of Darwinian competition
title_full_unstemmed The Janus face of Darwinian competition
title_short The Janus face of Darwinian competition
title_sort janus face of darwinian competition
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4564810/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26354182
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep13662
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