Online Altruism Lab

Introduction

Public goods games are a class of models used to study cooperation and conflict in groups. In these games, individuals can contribute to a common resource — the "public good" — that benefits all group members, regardless of whether they contributed. Contributions typically come at a personal cost, while the benefits are shared among the group.

In biology, public goods games provide a framework for understanding cooperative behaviors in diverse systems, such as microbes secreting enzymes, plants sharing resources through root systems, or animals engaging in group defense. They capture the fundamental problem of cooperation: how costly contributions to a shared benefit can persist despite the risk of exploitation.

The presented multi-agent simulation shows that there is a clear fitness advantage for altruists if following conditions are met:
  • The population is segregated into groups that persist over time or several generations.
  • There is an appropriate level of migration between the groups.
  • The costs for the altruist are smaller than sum of its benefits for all group members.
  • There is an abiotic or interspecific selection pressure, whose individual impact depends on the costs and benefits.
  • There is already a high proportion of altruists in the population and/or the proportion of altruists varies greatly between groups.
The simulation also provides scenarios for the possible evolution of altruists from a purely selfish population.

You can find more detailed information in "Altruism pays off in group-structured populations through probable reciprocity" (PDF on bioRxiv).

References and further reading

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Steiner, K.F., 2024. Altruism pays off in group-structured populations through probable reciprocity. bioRxiv 2024.01.20.575560. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.01.20.575560

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