Image scoring and cooperation in a cleaner fish mutualism

Humans are highly social animals and often help unrelated individuals that may never reciprocate the altruist's favour(1-5). This apparent evolutionary puzzle may be explained by the altruist's gain in social image: image-scoring bystanders, also known as eavesdroppers, notice the altruistic act and therefore are more likely to help the altruist in the future(5-7). Such complex indirect reciprocity based on altruistic acts may evolve only after simple indirect reciprocity has been established, which requires two steps. First, image scoring evolves when bystanders gain personal benefits from information gathered, for example, by finding cooperative partners(8-10). Second, altruistic behaviour in the presence of such bystanders may evolve if altruists benefit from access to the bystanders. Here, we provide experimental evidence for both of the requirements in a cleaning mutualism involving the cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus. These cleaners may cooperate and remove ectoparasites from clients or they may cheat by feeding on client mucus(11,12). As mucus may be preferred over typical client ectoparasites(13), clients must make cleaners feed against their preference to obtain a cooperative service. We found that eavesdropping clients spent more time next to 'cooperative' than 'unknown cooperative level' cleaners, which shows that clients engage in image-scoring behaviour. Furthermore, trained cleaners learned to feed more cooperatively when in an `image-scoring' than in a 'non-image-scoring' situation.

Blogs, wikis and creative innovations

In this article, recent developments in the creation of web content, such as blogs and wikis, are surveyed with a focus on their role in technological and social innovation. The innovations associated with blogs and wikis are important in themselves, and the process of creative collaboration they represent is becoming central to technological progress in general. The internet and the world wide web, which have driven much of the economic growth of the past decade, were produced in this way. Standard assumptions about the competitive nature of innovation are undersupported in the new environment. If governments want to encourage the maximum amount of innovation in social production, they need to de-emphasize competition and emphasize creativity and cooperation.

The role of social capital in the promotion of conservation farming: The case of 'landcare' in the southern Philippines

'Social capital' refers to the relationships of trust, communication, and cooperation that facilitate collective action in a community. It is particularly relevant to soil conservation in developing countries, which requires collective efforts to raise awareness of soil degradation, provide effective training in soil conservation practices, and implement soil conservation measures on individual farms. The Landcare Program in the Southern Philippines promotes simple conservation practices in upland environments through establishing and supporting community landcare groups and municipal landcare associations, thus augmenting the social capital of farmers in these locations. An evaluation of the Landcare Program in Barangay Ned, South Cotabato, based on a survey of 313 farm households and case studies of nine landcare groups, shows that, despite extreme isolation and difficult working conditions, farmers responded by rapidly forming landcare groups and a landcare association, and adopting contour barriers on their maize farms. They utilized the bonding social capital inhering in their local communities to build stocks of bridging social capital, linking them to information, training and resources from outside their immediate locality. A logistic regression model of the factors affecting adoption of contour barriers shows that farmers who had undergone the practical, farmer-based training provided by the Landcare Program, and who were members of a landcare group, were significantly more likely to adopt conservation measures. These results confirm the value of investing in social capital to promote soil conservation. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.