Finding a Mate With Eusocial Skills

TL;DR

This paper investigates how social transfer mechanisms influence reproductive behaviors in agents, revealing that social learning can lead to eusociality and reproductive division of labor even without explicit social coordination.

Contribution

It demonstrates that social transfer mechanisms can foster eusocial behaviors and reproductive division of labor in agents, expanding understanding of social evolution.

Findings

Social learners show increased natal philopatry.

Evolved culture of eusociality in social learning agents.

Similar reproductive behaviors emerge in social and non-social agents.

Abstract

Sexual reproductive behavior has a necessary social coordination component as willing and capable partners must both be in the right place at the right time. It has recently been demonstrated that many social organizations that support sexual reproduction can evolve in the absence of social coordination between agents (e.g. herding, assortative mating, and natal philopatry). In this paper we explore these results by including social transfer mechanisms to our agents and contrasting their reproductive behavior with a control group without social transfer mechanisms. We conclude that similar behaviors emerge in our social learning agents as those that emerged in the non-social learning agents. Social learners were more inclined towards natal philopatry. Social learners also evolved a culture of eusociality including reproductive division of labor.