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COMMENT SPRING BOOKS SPRING BOOKS 2 EXHIBITION 6 Size Matters San JoseInstitute otContemporaryArt Catifomia UntilIS June 2011. THE ARTISTS AND JAY www.sican This Spring Books special issue displays a selection of works from Size Matteis, an exhibition featuring ten North American artists who address ideas of size and scale. The works view the world from unusual perspectives, from Ian Harvey and Koo Kyung Sook's wall-sized enamel and shellac mosaics of human figures to the miniscule sculptures of Dalton Ghetti, carved from the graphite points of pencils. Expressed in a range of media, including photographs, paintings and video, the works comment on biological building blocks, knowledge, emotions and the environment. Size Matters: Figure 2 (2007) by Ian Harvey and Koo Kyung Sook. Lil l mi l A revolution in evolution Manfred Milinski enjoys Martin Nowak's paean to the power of cooperation to shape animal and human societies. eading evolutionary theorist Martin part of evolutionary theory needs revisiting, L Nowak sees cooperation as the master architect of evolution. He believes that next to mutation and selection, cooperation but it is too soon to tell whether his bold ideas will hold up to empirical testing. Game theory is central to Nowak's work SuperCooperators: Altruism. Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed is the driving force at every level, from the and the book highlights five ways to work MARTINA.NOWAK'AITH primordial soup to cells, organisms, societies together for mutual benefit: direct reciproc- ROGERHIGHRELD and even galaxies. Without cooperation, he ity, indirect reciprocity, spatial games, group FreePress: 2011. says, our predecessors would still be RNA or multilevel selection and kin selection. 352 pp $27 molecules. He sets out his groundbreaking Direct reciprocity is the tit-for-tat exchange ideas in SuperCooperaton. of resources, which may be generous but is by helping or refusing help, which is spread Co-authored with science journalist and open to exploitation. Nowak believes that through gossip, thus selecting in evolutionary editor of New Scientist Roger Highfield, indirect reciprocity, where I help you and terms for sophisticated language. "Indirect SuperCooperators is part autobiography, someone else helps reciprocity is the midwife oflanguage and of part textbook, and reads like a best-selling 0 me, is the most impor- our big, powerful brain,* he says. novel. Nowak celebrates his oeuvre on the Foranother tent mechanism driv- Cooperators can prevail through exchanges evolution of cooperation and challenges the book review on ing human sociality. that are played out across and between net- mathematical basis for theories of kin selec- c set It enforces the power works and clusters of individuals, he explains. tion and punishment. He is correct that this of reputation, gained Multilevel or group selection follows among 294 I NATURE I VOL 471 I 17 MARCH 2011 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All lets reserved EFTA00599578  SPRING BOOKS COMMENT communities that are small, numerous and isolated; mediated for example by tribal wars for resources. However, the migration ofindi- viduals between groups can undermine coop- eration — egoists might takeover pure altruist groups. SuperCoopemtors notes that there is plenty ofevidence for group selection at the cellular level, such as strains of the bacterium Pseudomonasfluorescens that collectively pro- duce a mat ofpolymer that allows the group to float onliquid surfaces. More contentious is Nowak's approach to kin selection, or nepotism, in which indi- viduals cooperate to ensure the success of genetic relatives in preference to strangers. Nowak set out his objections to this theory last year in a controversial Nature paper,co- authored with Corina Tarnita and Edward O. Wilson (Nature466, 1057-1062;2010). They question the theoretical basis ofkin selection, or inclusive fitness theory: one of the corner- stones of the evolution ofsocial behaviour. Size Matters: Detail from Figure 2 (2007) by Ian Harvey and Koo Kyung Sook. Nowak and Highfield defend this view in Super-Cooperators. After reviewing the his- the queen manipulates them to produce an Nowak performed another experiment that, toryofevolutionary ideas about kin selection, equal sex ratio in her offspring for her own alas, failed to prove that reward rather than including the lives ofpioneering evolutionary benefit. I anticipate that a better mathemat- punishment promotes public cooperation. theorists Bill Hamilton, George Price, John ical formulation of social evolution theory Clearly, the jury is still out on this question. Maynard Smith and J. B. S. Haldane, Nowak will be found that includes relatedness, is SuperCooperators is also Nowak's auto- criticizes key equations and calls them a rec- compatible with existing evidence and biography. After attending an all-boys ipe for disaster. He argues that the predictions includes Hamilton's rule as a rule of thumb. school, he relates how he met his wife on ofHamilton's rule, which quantifies whether Nowak himself states that "kin selection is his first female-dominated pharmacology or not a gene for altruistic behaviour towards a valid mechanism ifproperly formulated". course. And he recounts moments shared relatives will spread in a population, almost In another assault on established views, with his supporters: mountain climbing with never hold. And he decries Price's funda- Nowak strongly disputes the effectiveness chemist Peter Schuster; walking through the mental equation, on which current inclusive ancient forests of Austria's Rauriser Urwald fitness theory is based, as the mathematical with Karl Sigmund; playing soccer with equivalent of tautology. theoretical ecologist Bob May; or dining In place ofinclusive fitness theory, Nowak NOWAK BELIEVES THAT on a Caribbean beachfront with Jeffrey sketches a new model for the evolution of sociality, in which relatedness, he says, is a COOPERATION Epstein, the Wall Street tycoon who funded iarvard University's Program for Evolution- consequence rather than the cause ofsocial HOLDS FOR ary Dynamics, of which Nowak is director. behaviour. By assuming only one mutation — one that causes offspring to stay in the nest rather than leave— he claims to explain `ANY AND EVERY Nowak finishes with his concern for our planet, and of how Mahler's symphony Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) why progeny happen to be around to help their related mother. This model implies that GAME carries a deep resonance for him. He wor- ries about the climate game that every- offspring would help any unrelated elder in whose nest they were born, irrespective of IN THE one is now playing. "I believe that climate change will force us to enter a new chapter of a genetic link, and it does not explain why parents insist on caring for their own off- COSMOS'. cooperation:' he writes, but his research does not provide a recipe. spring rather than others. Here, in my view, A pleasure to read, SuperCooperators relatedness is essential. Many experimental offers an explanation of the evolution of results support this, such as the sex ratios in of punishment as a method for promoting cooperation and shows where the experts colonies ofdifferent ant species. cooperation. Here he splits from his erstwhile disagree. Yet Nowales faith in cooperation is In ant species in which the queen mates colleague, game theorist Karl Sigmund, who so great that he believes his approach holds only once, for example, a preponderance of accepts that the stick can be as useful as the for "any and every game in the cosmos" — female reproductive offspring benefits the carrot. Nowak, the theorist, describes how for all evolutionary processes on Earth, in workers more than it does the queen: the he performed experiments. In a version of our Galaxy and others,in "agglomerations of non-reproductive workers support their the prisoner's dilemma game — in which ancient stars that lurk in the faintest, farthest mother to produce sisters, to which they two isolated players may choose to cooperate reaches, We will see.. are more closely related (75%) than is the and both benefit, or one defects and receives queen (50%), thus more effectively perpet- a greater reward, being eventually punished Manfred MIllinski is a director oftheMax uating their genes than if they raised their by the other — he showed that those who Planck Institutefor Evolutionary Biology own offspring. By contrast, in slave-maker do not punish gain most. No one has yet Department ofEvolutionary Ecology Pion, ants, in which workers are stolen front showed that punishers can gain from pun- Germany. other species and are therefore unrelated, ishing,so it is not clear why punishingexists. e-mail: milinskiesevolbio.mpg.de 17 MARCH 2011 I VOL 471 I NATURE I 295 rig 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All nets reserved EFTA00599579