Social evolution articles from across Nature Portfolio

Fitness consequences of communal breeding suggest a role for oxytocin in the evolution of egalitarian social relationships - cooperating sisters with higher hypothalamic oxytocin levels have more equal and greater combined reproductive success.

In an information-abundant landscape, people can accurately judge the reputations of others by researching only a fraction of the available information while forgiving some instances of bad behaviour.

Using three-dimensional field-based tracking and field experiments, the authors find that octopus–fish collective hunting groups exhibit complex functional dynamics and composition-dependent properties, in which different members of the group lead on different decisions.

Cooperation is crucial for human prosperity, and population structure fosters it through pairwise interactions and coordinated behavior in larger groups. A recent study explores the evolution of behavioral strategies in higher-order population structures, including pairwise and multi-way interactions to reveal that higher-order interactions promote cooperation across networks, especially when they are formed by conjoined communities.

The causation of sexual orientation is likely to be complex and influenced by multiple factors. We advocate incorporating a broader cultural view into evolutionary and genetic studies to account for differences in how sexual orientation is experienced, expressed and understood in both humans and nonhuman animals.

Short-lived online social network experiments show that making the in-game wealth of immediate neighbors invisible improves the subjective wellbeing (SWB) of poorer participants. This status invisibility reduced the strength of the positive association between in-game wealth and SWB in social networks. However, in real-world settings, status is often visible.

Using genome assemblies and comparative analyses, we identified evolutionary signatures of selection associated with repeated gains and losses of social behaviour in sweat bees. These signatures include changes in regulatory regions and young genes, as well as complementary patterns of positive and relaxed selection on proteins involved in juvenile hormone signalling.

In social interactions, individuals are often tempted to ‘free ride’ (benefit without paying) on other group members’ contributions. A new mathematical framework suggests a strategy based on cumulative reciprocity that can help to sustain mutual cooperation.