Aarhus University Seal

Trine Bilde: The evolution of animal cooperation - and lessons from social spiders

An IMC seminar with professor of evolutionary ecology, Trine Bilde, Department of Bioscience,

Aarhus University.

Stegodyphus dumicola
Trine Bilde, Professor in Evolutionary Ecology, AU

The evolution of animal cooperation  - and lessons from social spiders 

The evolution of cooperation is puzzling, because helping behaviour is costly to the actor. Selfish behaviour favoured by natural selection is therefore a threat to cooperation as an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). I will discuss ESS models of cooperation, and present empirical work testing some of these models in social spiders.