EUROCORES_TECT: Cooperation in corvids

Our consortium, consisting of groups from Austria, France, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands and the USA, plus an Associated Partner from the UK, seeks to use the largely untapped potential of the corvids (ravens, crows, rooks, jackdaws, jays and magpies) to deepen our understanding of cooperation in group-living organisms. Till date research on this topic has concentrated on the primates, both human and non-human. In order to tell unique `historical accidents` apart from fundamental evolutionary principles, one needs extensive information on at least one more taxon that can rival the primates in its rich variation of social organisations; is easily accessible for study, and has a proven potential for an experimental approach. The European corvids are ideally suited to play this role and our consortium includes virtually all European research groups working on these species. We strive not only to better understand the selective forces that resulted in the evolution of the mechanisms that play a role in cooperation, but also to unravel those mechanisms themselves at various levels, by investigating neuronal structures and endocrinological processes, by testing the basic cognitive abilities needed to cooperate and coordinate, by investigating the role of individual and social learning, and by prying apart the relative influence of genetic and environmental factors. We made the fundamental choice of making our results easily comparable to those found for primates by copying key experiments and observational studies done with primates. This approach is flanked by two fundamental different ways of modelling cooperation in group-living animals: firstly, a group of economists will construct models with the help of evolutionary game-theory using feed-back from our experiments with corvids as well as human subjects and secondly, experts in artificial intelligence will use `embodied artificial agents (robots) to emulate cooperation among living agents, using our corvids as examples.