Cooperation and competition: Neural mechanisms of evolved communication systems ⋆

Abstract

Combining mechanistic and evolutionary perspectives to un- derstand the emergence of communication is still a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Regarding this challenge, we discuss experiments which unify the ideas of evolutionary robotics with the dynamical sys- tems approach to adaptive behavior. Here, we investigate how already evolved communicative behavior changes during further evolution when a population is confronted with competition about limited environmental resources. A thorough analysis at the neural level reveals changes of the mechanisms that underlie behavior, which eventually lead to the emer- gence of signal coordination, intraspecific cooperative, and interspecific aggressive signaling. Further, we demonstrate the development of coun- teractive niche construction based on a modification of communication strategies which generates an evolutionary feedback resulting in an ac- tive reduction of selection pressure. Our findings strongly support the complementary nature of robotic experiments to study the evolution of communication.