Computational Social Science, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.
J Hum Evol. 2018 Mar;116:43-56. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.11.009. Epub 2018 Jan 11.
This article describes simulation research based on the Hamiltonian theory of gene-based altruism. It investigates the origin of semipermanent breeding bonds during hominin evolution. The research framework is based on a biologically detailed, ecologically situated, multi-agent microsimulation of emergent sociality. The research question tested is whether semipermanent breeding bonds (an emergent homoplastic social construct) might emerge among primate-like agents as the consequence of a mutation capable of supporting involuntary prosocial behavior. The research protocol compared several, single independent-variable longitudinal studies wherein hundreds of generations of autonomous, initially promiscuous, biologically detailed, hominin-like artificial life software agents were born, allowed to forage, reproduce, and die during experimental intervals lasting several simulated millennia. The temporal setting of the experiment was roughly contemporaneous with, or slightly after the time of, the Pan-Homo split. The simulation investigated what would happen if, within a population, a single gene for prosocial behavior (the independent variable in the experiment) was either switched on or switched-off. The null hypothesis predicted that, if the gene was switched off, then semipermanent breeding bonds (the dependent variable) would nonetheless emerge within the population. The results of the simulation rejected this null hypothesis, by showing that semipermanent breeding bonds would reliably emerge among the experimental populations but not among the control groups. Moreover, it was found that, across all experimental settings having constrained population numbers, the portion of each population having no prosocial trait would die out early, whereas the portion with the prosocial trait would survive. Large control populations had no discernible loss. The results of this research imply that, during the early stages of hominin evolution, there might have been a set of initially gene-based, altruistic excess forage-sharing social traits that contributed to the onset of morphological and additional complex social changes characteristic of this group. This work also demonstrates that modern computational technologies can extend our ability to test 'what if' hypotheses appropriate to the study of early hominin evolution.
本文基于基于基因利他主义的哈密顿理论，对模拟研究进行了描述。研究了在人类进化过程中半永久性繁殖纽带的起源。研究框架基于对新兴社会性的生物详细、生态定位、多代理微观模拟。测试的研究问题是，作为一种能够支持非自愿亲社会行为的突变的结果，半永久性繁殖纽带（一种新兴的同形社会结构）是否可能在类人猿代理中出现。研究方案比较了几项单一独立变量的纵向研究，其中数百代自主的、最初杂乱无章的、生物详细的、类人生命软件代理在几个模拟千年的实验间隔中出生、觅食、繁殖和死亡。实验的时间设定大致与 Pan-Homo 分裂的时间同时或稍晚。模拟研究了如果在一个种群中，亲社会行为的单个基因（实验中的独立变量）被打开或关闭，会发生什么情况。零假设预测，如果基因关闭，那么半永久性繁殖纽带（依赖变量）仍将在种群中出现。模拟的结果拒绝了这个零假设，表明半永久性繁殖纽带将可靠地出现在实验群体中，但不会出现在对照组中。此外，还发现，在所有受约束种群数量的实验设置中，每个种群中没有亲社会特征的部分会早期灭绝，而具有亲社会特征的部分会存活下来。大的对照组没有明显的损失。这项研究的结果表明，在人类进化的早期阶段，可能存在一组最初基于基因的、利他的额外的过度分享食物的社会特征，这些特征有助于该群体的形态和其他复杂的社会变化的开始。这项工作还表明，现代计算技术可以扩展我们测试适用于早期人类进化研究的“如果......会怎样”假设的能力。
