Dynamic network partnerships and social contagion drive cooperation

Abstract

ABSTRACTBoth reciprocity and positive assortment (like with like) are predicted to promote the evolution of cooperation, yet how partners influence each other’s behavior within dynamic networks is not well understood. One way to test this question is to partition phenotypic variation into differences among individuals in the expression of cooperative behavior (the “direct effect”), and plasticity within individuals in response to the social environment (the “indirect effect”). A positive correlation between these two sources of variation, such that more cooperative individuals elicit others to cooperate, is predicted to facilitate social contagion and selection on cooperative behavior. Testing this hypothesis is challenging, however, because it requires repeated measures of behavior across a dynamic social landscape. Here, we use an automated data-logging system to quantify the behavior of 179 wire-tailed manakins, birds that form cooperative male-male coalitions, and we use multiple-membership models to test the hypothesis that dynamic network partnerships shape within-individual variation in cooperative behavior. Our results show strong positive correlations between a bird’s own sociality and his estimated effect on his partners, consistent with the hypothesis that cooperation begets cooperation. These findings support the hypothesis that social contagion can facilitate selection for cooperative behavior within social networks.