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The evolution of democratic peace in animal societies

Hunt, K. L.; Patel, M.; Croft, D. P.; Franks, D. W.; Green, P. A.; Thompson, F. J.; Johnstone, R. A.; Cant, M. A.; Sankey, D. W.E.

Authors

K. L. Hunt

D. P. Croft

D. W. Franks

P. A. Green

F. J. Thompson

R. A. Johnstone

M. A. Cant

D. W.E. Sankey



Abstract

A major goal in evolutionary biology is to elucidate common principles that drive human and other animal societies to adopt either a warlike or peaceful nature. One proposed explanation for the variation in aggression between human societies is the democratic peace hypothesis. According to this theory, autocracies are more warlike than democracies because autocratic leaders can pursue fights for private gain. However, autocratic and democratic decision-making processes are not unique to humans and are widely observed across a diverse range of non-human animal societies. We use evolutionary game theory to evaluate whether the logic of democratic peace may apply across taxa; specifically adapting the classic Hawk-Dove model to consider conflict decisions made by groups rather than individuals. We find support for the democratic peace hypothesis without mechanisms involving complex human institutions and discuss how these findings might be relevant to non-human animal societies. We suggest that the degree to which collective decisions are shared may explain variation in the intensity of intergroup conflict in nature.

Citation

Hunt, K. L., Patel, M., Croft, D. P., Franks, D. W., Green, P. A., Thompson, F. J., Johnstone, R. A., Cant, M. A., & Sankey, D. W. (2024). The evolution of democratic peace in animal societies. Nature communications, 15(1), Article 6583. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50621-5

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 17, 2024
Online Publication Date Aug 3, 2024
Publication Date Dec 1, 2024
Deposit Date Jul 30, 2024
Publicly Available Date Aug 6, 2024
Journal Nature Communications
Electronic ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher Nature Publishing Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 15
Issue 1
Article Number 6583
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50621-5
Keywords Leadership; Intergroup conflict; Democracy; Game theory; Evolution 39
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4749125

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2024.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.




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