Table 1.
Empirical examples for individual differences in cooperative behaviour across different taxa.
| species | context | individual differences | references |
|---|---|---|---|
| invertebrates | |||
| microbes | |||
| soil-living social amoebae (Dictyostelium discoideum) | formation of stalk and fruiting body | ‘cheating’ clones selfishly promote their own reproduction at the cost of the ‘altruistic’ clones | Fortunato et al. (2003) |
| Cnidaria | |||
| social anemone (Anthopleurea elegantissima) | clonal aggregations of social anemones | small polyps forgo reproduction and defend against other clones, large polyps at the centre produce gonads | Ayre & Grosberg (2005) |
| insects | |||
| honeybee (Apis melifera) | reproduction | royal subfamilies within worker populations give rise to new queens | Chaline et al. (2003) and Moritz et al. (2005) |
| cape bee (Apis melifera capensis) | reproduction and foraging | some worker subpopulations are less effective foragers, instead they develop ovaries and attain queen-like status within colonies | Moritz & Hillesheim (1985) and Hillesheim et al. (1989) |
| leaf-cutting ant (Acromyrmex echinatior) | reproduction | rare patrilines cheat nest mates by developing into queens instead of workers | Hughes & Boomsma (2008) |
| paper wasp (Polistes dominulus) | nest founding | some wasps adopt cooperative strategy (nest founding), while others are more selfish (nest adopting) | Starks (2001) |
| vertebrates | |||
| fish | |||
| cichlid (Neolamprologus pulcher) | helping | individual differences in amount and type of help provided | Bergmüller & Taborsky (2007) and Schürch & Heg (2010a,b) |
| three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) | predator inspection | individual differences between bold and cautious individuals | Milinski (1987) |
| guppy (Poecilia reticulata) | predator inspection | population and individual differences | Bleakley et al. (2006) |
| reptiles | |||
| common lizard (Lacerta vivipara) | dispersal, sociality | variation in sociability associated with dispersal patterns | Cote & Clobert (2007) |
| birds | |||
| noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala) | helping | provisioning and predator defence are negatively correlated | Arnold et al. (2005) |
| Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis) | helping at the nest | individual differences in the propensity to help or budding-off of separate territories | Komdeur & Edelaar (2001a,b) |
| western bluebird (Sialia mexicana) | helping at the nest | heritable variation in the propensity to help or breed independently | Charmantier et al. (2007) |
| house sparrow (Passer domesticus) | foraging | parental role models determine whether individuals become producers or scroungers | Katsnelson et al. (2008) |
| mammals | |||
| lion (Panthera leo) | reaction to territory intrusion | some individuals rapidly approach intruders, others lag behind | Heinsohn & Packer (1995) |
| task-sharing in cooperative hunting | some individuals circle prey, others wait in the centre for the prey | Stander (1992) | |
| bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncates) | hunting | consistent roles in cooperative hunting | Gazda et al. (2005) |
| marmot (Marmota flaviventris) | greeting and allo-grooming | cooperative tendencies related to life-history traits and risk-associated behaviour | Armitage (1986) |
| naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber) | helping | some individuals specialised to dispersing instead of helping | O'Riain et al. (1996) |
| chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) | hunting | consistent roles in cooperative hunting | Boesch (2002) |
| rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) | social interactions | agreeableness predicts affiliative interactions | Capitanio (1999) |
| calmness scores of infants predict number of social relationships later | Weinstein & Capitanio (2008) | ||
| vervet monkey (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) | social interactions | individual differences in social competence, in part related to rank | McGuire et al. (1994) |
| humans (Homo sapiens) | experimental economic games | individual differences in the propensity to cooperate | Ostrom et al. (1999), Kurzban & Houser (2001) and Milinski et al. (2008) |
| humans (Homo sapiens) | experimental economic games | heritable variation in the propensity to cooperate | Wallace et al. (2007) and Cesarini et al. (2008) |