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my thoughts on science

Why is there an old boys club?

11/4/2015

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This blog is a bit of fun, an evolutionary pop-psychology slant on an issue that seems to plague modern Britain. It’s nepotism. The governing class of the UK, and particularly the Tories, come under a huge amount of criticism for promoting their own and for running the country like an ‘old boys club’. Whether or not this is completely true or not isn’t going to be the subject of this blog, but having said that: social mobility in the UK does seem to be stagnant.
 
But when common sense and evidence suggests that low social mobility and income inequality reduce economic growth, why would any government act in a way to promote their own? This assumption is based on the idea that people behave in a way that always maximised the benefits for the whole group. If you look at the way animals behave this is not the case, decisions are typically made to get the best rewards for the individual, sometimes these coincide with behaviours that benefit the group and in these cases cooperation occurs. But taking humans as a good example, Robert Mugabe benefits by using state funds to let his wife go shopping in Europe but the country as a whole suffers.
 
How does this relate to our beloved Tories? (Just remember this is pop-evo-psychology) I place nepotism in our political classes squarely at the feet of mutualism and reciprocal altruism. Both parties are likely to benefit from these interactions, but as Bill Hamilton pointed out: many of these benefits may not be realised until the future. Vampire bats famously give blood meals to individuals who were unsuccessful on their nights foraging, but bats are more likely to share with individuals who have previously given them food. Helping progress the career of someone from a high socioeconomic class may be more likely to result in a benefit to you further down the line, after all they are wealthier. Also knowledge of past interactions helps inform how likely you are to gain future benefits, cheating is rife in animal systems and like vampire bats past interactions may play a role in shaping who we chose to help. If someone has gone to the same school or university as you and moves in the same social circles then it’s easier to gauge these things.  You may also have more accurate information about their actual ability, so you may be more certain of what you are getting compared to an individual from outside of your group.
 
But to keep things honest, and I am not saying nepotism is honest, costs are often used to deter cheating. When the cost of cheating is high then it is less likely to happen. If an individual is in your social circle or friendship group and cheats then the social cost is quite high. Therefore, it may be harder to enforce the reciprocal nature of altruism when helping individuals from outside a known group.
 
Finally, on our tour of why people help each other, is kin selection. The theory here is that you assist those who share more of their genes with you than other individuals, to improve their chances of breeding and increasing those shared genes. How on earth does this relate to politicians? Well it doesn’t relate directly, but kin selection and relatedness is a strong factor in group structure in animals and potentially our ancestors. This is really straying into pop-psychology now, but if these same attitudes have been extended to for example the football teams we support then why not our social classes? In group- out group dynamics, an idea of us and them may be a by-product of kin selection on our ancestors. An idea of we help our own not those other people, may have arisen from this.
 
All of the above don’t take into account the pervading culture of societies, as these will change the costs and benefits of nepotism. For example strict policing, by police not by other individuals as happens in ants and bees, may provide a high cost to nepotistic behaviour. But I hope that I’ve given some insight into why it might be that the ‘old boys club’ might exist, and by understanding why it exists we can seek to change the costs and benefits of this behaviour to stop it from happening and improve social mobility and our economic future.
 
If this rambling post has piqued your interest into why animals and humans cooperate then here are a few interesting papers that deal with altruism and cooperation:
 
Fehr & Fischbacher (2003) Nature, 425:785-791
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6960/abs/nature02043.html
 
Clutton-Brock (2002) Science, 296:69-72
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/296/5565/69.short
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Some cool papers and blogs

3/24/2015

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Just a collection of random papers, theme issues and a blog that I thought looked pretty cool and that some people might find interesting.

First up, a paper about sexual conflict in a hemaphroditic species, plus it involves love darts! Snails have a really interesting mating system and this paper looks into how the costly behaviour of having love darts leads to conflict, sexual arms race and diversification of morphologies.

Kiruma & Chiba (2015) The direct cost of traumatic secretion transfer in hermaphroditic land snails: individuals stabbed with a love dart decrease lifetime fecundity. Proc R Soc B
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1804/20143063

Next up, a themed issue on the biological impacts of artificial light, put together by Gaston, Visser and Holker. Its in Philosophical Transactions and my favourite paper in it is by Dominoni & Partecke called 
"Does light pollution alter daylength? A test using light loggers on free-rannging European blackbirds (Turdus merula)"
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1667.toc

A paper about duetting in wrens. Using playbacks the authors show that females preferentially sing duets with mates to ward off intruders over singing overlapping songs with the 'intruding' female - which they do in the absence of their mate singing.


Templeton et al. (2015) Female happy wrens select songs to cooperate with their mates rather than confront intruders. Proc R Soc B
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/9/1/20120863


Vocal duetting occurs in many taxa, but its function remains much-debated. Like species in which only one sex sings, duetting birds can use their song repertoires to signal aggression by singing song types that match those of territorial intruders. However, when pairs do not share specific combinations of songs (duet codes), individuals must choose to signal aggression by matching the same-sex rival, or commitment by replying appropriately to their mate. Here, we examined the song types used by female happy wrens (Pheugopedius felix) forced to make this decision in a playback experiment. We temporarily removed the male from the territory and then played songs from two loudspeakers to simulate an intruding female and the removed mate's response, using song types that the pair possessed but did not naturally combine into duets. Females were aggressive towards the female playback speaker, approaching it and overlapping the female playback songs, but nevertheless replied appropriately to their mate's songs instead of type matching the intruding female. This study indicates that females use song overlapping to signal aggression but use their vocal repertoires to create pair-specific duet codes with their mates, suggesting that duetting functions primarily to demonstrate pair commitment.



Lastly, a nice blog about sex ratios in bumble bees. Eusocial hymenoptera are fascinating, they have enthralled scientist for generations. Because of the asymmetric relatedness caused by haplodiploidy the conflicts and cooperation within these societies provide so many avenues for investigation and manipulation.


A little snippet from the blog: "Analysing my data I realised there were two types of colonies: those that quickly started to produce sexual individuals, and others that took much longer. The former invested much more in male production, whereas the latter mainly produced new queens. Hence, it appeared colonies adopted different strategies, and I hypothesised that both strategies could be equally successful, provided a population contains both."


https://blogs.royalsociety.org/publishing/sex-ratios-in-bumblebees-and-an-influential-experience/?utm_source=social_media&utm_medium=hootsuite&utm_campaign=standard--
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V-formation reciprocity 

2/3/2015

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Just a quick one. I've just seen some interesting coverage of reciprocal altruism in  Northern bald ibis. The researchers, led by Bernard Voelkl (at the EGI in Oxford) used GPS loggerts to see how the birds moved in relation to each other. They found that they spent equal amounts of time in the most aerodynamic position and switched quickly, which Voelkl suggests can limit the opportunity to cheat.

Interesting paper and coverage in New Scientist:

Voelkl et al. (2015) Matching times of leading and following suggest cooperation through direct reciprocity during V-formation flight in ibis. PNAS, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1413589112


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26895-formationflying-birds-swap-places-to-share-out-lift.html?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=twitter&cmpid=SOC%7CNSNS%7C2014-GLOBAL-twitter#.VNCf59KsUrV
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    I am a behavioural ecologist, my main interests revolve around familial conflicts and their resolutions. However, my scientific interests are fairly broad.

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