Cooperation in Biological and Social Systems

Cooperation in Biological and Social Systems analyzes cooperation within both biological networks and human societies. The book's approach is cross-disciplinary, focusing on key ideas and methods from genetics, biology, ecology, economics, and political science, while guiding students to make conceptual and mathematical connections between fields. The core objective of the book is to help students perceive the deep, common structure of networked interaction in nature, and to gain the tools necessary to formally analyze cooperation.

The book begins by offering a conceptual and mathematical toolkit centered on game theory and network science. Readers then apply these tools to the study of biological phenomena, including genetic networks, endosymbiosis, intraspecies cooperation, and mutualisms, in the following chapters. The final portion of the book presents case studies of the most pressing problems of collective action facing global society today, including climate change, cyberterrorism, and infectious disease, applying the lessons of biological and social evolution to the search for cooperative solutions.

Cooperation in Biological and Social Systems is a valuable resource for readers looking to gain further insight into biological networks and animal and human biology. This book is also helpful for students across academic disciplines aside from biology, including ecology, genetics, and political science.

• Describes and examines game theory and network science, providing readers with the rigorous quantitative foundation needed to link concepts across widely varying systems
• Structured to proceed sequentially through biological systems of increasing structural complexity, genomes, cells, organisms, ecological communities, to understand the nested nature of cooperation
• Includes key term lists, practice exercises, and detailed answers for reader engagement

I. The Mathematical and Physical Basis of Cooperation 1. What is cooperation? Physical, biological, and social formulations 2. The mathematics of cooperation: an introduction to game theory 3. The physics of cooperation: an introduction to complexity theory

II. Biological Cooperation 4. Genomic cooperation: the creation of chromosomes 5. Cellular cooperation: the rise of complex life 6. Organismal cooperation: Hamilton's rule as the basis of kin selection, coordination, and reciprocal altruism 7. Interspecies cooperation: mutualisms

III. Human Cooperation 8. Social cooperation: gene-culture co-evolution in human societies 9. Political cooperation: the social contract and democratic republics 10. Economic cooperation: the evolution of markets 11. International cooperation: a survey of major collective action problems

Bapu Vaitla is a visiting scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, focusing on the interaction of marine biological networks and human economies; a visiting lecturer at the University of California-Davis on cooperation in food systems; a research fellow at the Feinstein Center at Tufts University, looking at social and economic networks in rural, food-insecure areas of the developing world; and a research fellow co-managing a gender inequality research portfolio with Data2X, a project of the United Nations Foundation. His core interest is the relationship between human cooperation and child well-being: why people decide to work together (or not) for mutual benefit, and the effects of these decisions on public policy, cultural change, and ultimately the lives of children. He was born in India and grew up in California. He holds a BA in Nature and Culture and an MS in International Agricultural Development from the University of California-Davis, as well as a PhD in international relations/political economy from Tufts University. He has also attended the Santa Fe Institute's Complex Systems Summer School. He has worked internationally in numerous countries, focusing especially on India, Ethiopia, and Brazil, for UNICEF, the NGO Action Against Hunger, and other international organizations.