A Refinement of the Biological Market Model

Cooperative actions that involve the exchange of goods or services usually require three crucial steps to be mastered: (1) partner choice, (2) determining an exchange rate for the commodities and (3) partner control to prevent cheating. The biological market paradigm focuses on the question how cooperating individuals agree upon the amount of investment each participant has to make and the partitioning of the benefits. Its fundamental notion is that changes in exchange rates of commodities can be explained by changes in the supply-and-demand ratio between these commodities. Consequently, mechanisms such as partner choice and outbidding, should be central elements in both interspecific mutualism, and intraspecific cooperation. The proposed project would be a continuation and extension of the work that started with the research project GEBACO -Genetic Basis of Cooperation funded by the European Union (Grant 28696, Coordinator: R. No). By conducting field experiments with wild vervet monkeys we could show that the monkeys adjust the time they groom a group member accurately to fluctuations in the value of that animal as a social partner. The results of this study, however, raise further questions and suggest to refine the biological market model by including group structure and information flow as additional variables. The aims of the proposed project are, therefore, to (1) further analyze the available data, (2) develop a refined biological market model that allows for incomplete information and limitations in partner choice using analytic and simulation techniques, and (3) develop a proposal for empirical testing of the refined model. For completing these tasks at the Département Ecologie, Physiologie et Ethologie of the CNRS-Strasbourg I am asking for an Erwin-Schroedinger stipend for a duration of 12 months.