Essential conditions for evolution of communication within a species

TL;DR

This paper introduces a mutual information-based method to analyze the evolution of communication, highlighting the importance of correlated interactions, affective behavior, and population dynamics in developing complex information exchange.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach using mutual information to identify conditions necessary for communication evolution, emphasizing correlated interactions and demographic factors.

Findings

Correlated indirect reciprocity interactions are essential for communication emergence.

Population size variations accelerate the development of communication.

Evidence from demographic bottlenecks supports the model's predictions.

Abstract

A major obstacle in analyzing the evolution of information exchange and processing is our insufficient understanding of the underlying signaling and decision-making biological mechanisms. For instance, it is unclear why are humans unique in developing such extensive communication abilities. To treat this problem, a method based on the mutual information approach is developed that evaluates the information content of communication between interacting individuals through correlations of their behavior patterns (rather than calculating the information load of exchanged discrete signals, e.g. Shannon entropy). It predicts that correlated interactions of the indirect reciprocity type together with affective behavior and selection rules changing with time are necessary conditions for the emergence of significant information exchange. Population size variations accelerate this development. These results are supported by evidence of demographic bottlenecks, distinguishing human from other species' (e.g. apes) evolution line. They indicate as well new pathways for evolution of information based phenomena, such as intelligence and complexity.