Animal cooperation has puzzled biologists for a long time as its existence seems to contravene the basic notion of evolutionary biology that natural selection favours ‘selfish’ genes that promote only their own well-being. Evolutionary game theory has shown that cooperators can prosper in populations of selfish individuals if they occur in clusters, interacting more frequently with each other than with the selfish. Here we show that social networks of primates possess the necessary social structure to promote the emergence of cooperation. By simulating evolutionary dynamics of cooperative behaviour on interaction networks of 70 primate groups, we found that for most groups network reciprocity augmented the fixation probability for cooperation. The variation in the strength of this effect can be partly explained by the groups’ community modularity—a network measure for the groups’ heterogeneity. Thus, given selective update and partner choice mechanisms, network reciprocity has the potential to explain socially learned forms of cooperation in primate societies.

Studies that examine how helping behavior varies among individuals shed light on both the extent and the variation of human cooperative tendencies and the potential fragility of genealogical kinship in structuring prosociality. Here we explore the importance of both reciprocal altruism and kin selection in structuring cooperation in a contemporary African village context (Mpimbwe, Tanzania), where ethnographic observations suggest that traditional patterns of cooperation are becoming deeply eroded. Our analysis of the various ways in which people assist each other reveals that levels of helping are low. Reciprocal altruism is the principal explanation for helping, and genealogical kinship is important with respect to directing unilateral aid to needy individuals. However, more nuanced analyses, in conjunction with ethnographic evidence of threats of supernatural sanctions on uncooperative kin, expose the fragility of biological kinship in structuring cooperation in Mpimbwe and a further preference for aff...

Increasing stress resilience of livestock is important for ethical and profitable meat and dairy production. Susceptibility to stress can entail damaging behaviours, a common problem in pig production. Breeding animals with increased stress resilience is difficult for various reasons. First, studies on neuroendocrine and behavioural stress responses in farm animals are scarce, as it is difficult to record adequate phenotypes under field conditions. Second, damaging behaviours and stress susceptibility are complex traits, and their biology is not yet well understood. Dissecting complex traits into biologically better defined, heritable and easily measurable proxy traits and developing biomarkers will facilitate recording these traits in large numbers. High-throughput molecular technologies (“omics”) study the entirety of molecules and their interactions in a single analysis step. They can help to decipher the contributions of different physiological systems and identify candidate molecules that are representative of different physiological pathways. Here, we provide a general overview of different omics approaches and we give examples of how these techniques could be applied to discover biomarkers. We discuss the genetic dissection of the stress response by different omics techniques and we provide examples and outline potential applications of omics tools to understand and prevent outbreaks of damaging behaviours.