A distributed simulation of roost-based selection for altruistic behavior in Vampire Bats

Abstract

Vampire bats exhibit a unique behavior: they help unlucky conspecifics by sharing part of their meal. This altruistic act seems to happen in their group of reference even between individuals not genetically related. Inspired by this biological example, we have developed a simulation that reproduces its essential traits, where group selection counteracts selective pressure towards cheating: the roosting effect. Previous work on the same theme has shown how the roosting effect can cope with sensible mutation levels. Here, leveraging the features of D-Mason that allows to run massive simulations on a distributed environment, as well as performing a batch scheduling of the experiments, we derive a relationship between mutation rate and roost size. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.