Individual Actions Benefit Group

a green and red white-fronted bee-eater bird stands on a branch

Biological Strategy

White-fronted bee-eater

AskNature Team

Image: Lisette Verwoerd / Unsplash / CC BY NC - Creative Commons Attribution + Noncommercial

Coordinate by Self-Organization

To create and maintain a healthy community of individuals and ecosystems requires that living systems coordinate their activities. Coordination doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s a leader orchestrating what happens. In nature, coordination is usually achieved through self-organization. In a flock of geese flying in a V-formation, for example, there’s no lead goose controlling where all of the others fly. The flock uses this formation because each goose gains energy from air vortices created by the goose in front of it. The lead goose doesn’t gain that benefit, so when it tires, it moves back and another goose takes the front position.

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Cooperate Within the Same Species

A species is a group of organisms capable of breeding to produce fertile offspring. When individuals within a species undertake activities that benefit one another, that cooperation benefits not just the individuals, but also local and wider populations of that species. Collaborating in activities such as finding food, controlling parasites, and protecting from predators enhances overall survival. To cooperate, there must be enough benefit to an individual, and especially to a population, to justify any risk taken by individuals. Through cooperation, risk is distributed among individuals and the benefits to the community are greater than the sum of the benefits to individuals. An example is birds that gather in flocks, a cooperative activity more beneficial than acting alone. While some birds forage, others watch for predators. When one finds food, others also feed on it. Despite potential short-term competition for an individual that finds food, over the long-term, that same individual benefits when others find different food sources.

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Birds

Class Aves (“bird”): Eagles, hawks, sparrows, parrots

Birds are evolutionary engineering marvels. They are descended from dinosaurs, but are far from our idea of heavy, scaly reptiles. Of the specific adaptions that set them apart, most notable is flight—although some mammals can fly, birds take the prize for abundance in the skies. Many birds have hollow, lightweight skeletons and specially-designed wings to help them stay aloft. They also have feathers made of keratin that help them stay warm, attract mates, and improve navigation and aerodynamics in flight. In contrast to their dinosaur ancestors, they lack true teeth and have replaced them with specialized beaks and bills.

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Members of many animal communities improve the survival of the group by self-sacrificing time, energy, and resources.

Image: Sander Kuulkers /

White-fronted Bee-eater

Image: Jacqui Goodwin /

Image: Lisette Verwoerd / Unsplash / CC BY NC - Creative Commons Attribution + Noncommercial

“Helena Cronin, codirector of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics, has a new approach to Darwinism: Only the altruistic survive. Smart evolution, Cronin says, involves self-sacrifice to aid the greater cause. Darwin himself recorded numerous examples of animals giving up their time, their food, their mates, and even their lives to help others in the population. By applying these principles to the economy, Cronin says, we can evolve to new heights. Cronin suggests stressing cooperation, putting renewed emphasis on policy, and understanding that competition is to be approached not as mortal combat, but as a display–similar to lekking behavior exhibited by male grouse.” (Courtesy of the Biomimicry Guild)

“White-fronted African bee eaters will face spitting cobras, forage
tirelessly for bees and delay having their own young–all to help close
relatives raise a clutch of baby birds. Why would any bird engage in
such magnanimous behavior? Years of direct observation have led two
scientists to suggest this altruism is an inherited trait that gives
the “helper” bird’s family a survival edge in the harsh African
savannah.

“Helper birds postpone opportunities to breed in order to help family
members,” says Cornell University biologist Stephen T. Emlen. But the
behavior is genetically “selfish” because it helps young relatives
survive, thereby perpetuating the family’s genes, Emlen says…Emlen and Wrege believe African bee eaters provide evidence for the
evolution of helping behavior even among birds that gain no direct
personal benefits from their action. Other researchers have suggested
that some bird species do benefit directly by helping another couple
raise a family. For example, they note, young helper birds may gain
experience that boosts their chance of successfully raising offspring
of their own later on. In bee eaters, however, a comparison of
first-time breeders with and without prior helping experience showed
that this factor had no effect on the number of young produced, report
Emlen and Wrege.” (Fackelmann 1989)