Exploitative leaders incite intergroup warfare in a social mammal.

ABSTRACT: Collective conflicts among humans are widespread, although often highly destructive. A classic explanation for the prevalence of such warfare in some human societies is leadership by self-serving individuals that reap the benefits of conflict while other members of society pay the costs. Here, we show that leadership of this kind can also explain the evolution of collective violence in certain animal societies. We first extend the classic hawk-dove model of the evolution of animal aggression to consider cases in which a subset of individuals within each group may initiate fights in which all group members become involved. We show that leadership of this kind, when combined with inequalities in the payoffs of fighting, can lead to the evolution of severe intergroup aggression, with negative

SUBMITTER: Johnstone RA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7703641 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature