Dawkins remarks that it is possible for mutual altruism to incur, and thereby solve the Prisoner’s Dilemma, if conditions such as iterated encounters, threat of retaliation, and “forgiveness” are met. He uses the example of the live-let-live strategy employed by British and German troops on WW1 and the strict alternation of sexes by hermaphrodite fishes. Such dynamics is also echoed in a special kind of mutual altruism among vampire bats.
The work of G.S. Wilkinson explains how non-kin individuals engage in altruistic behaviors. Albeit a significant amount of blood-sharing cases involve close relatives, he found that vampire bats sometimes donate blood to their unrelated counterparts to save them from starving. Such behavior is within the tenets of a Prisoner’s Dilemma. A Donate-Donate strategy is a win-win strategy because the cost of donating trumps the huge benefit of saving a comrade's life; in addition, when the unfortunate time comes of an unlucky forage, a vampire bat would greatly benefit from the prospect of a reciprocal donation. Interestingly, this is evidenced by repeating experiments from Wilkinson wherein a bat was removed and starved for a night and returned to the roost. In thirteen cases, twelve involved donation from a previous benefactor/friend, proving the condition for reciprocation.
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Nice post. Mentioning the experiments performed by Wilkinson provides an excellent example for the presence of altruism in species who can remember previous interactions. It might be helpful if you mentioned the difference between the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ben, Distinguishing between the two was pretty important in Dawkins. You are very well versed and always have great blogs.
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