Reciprocity is a cooperative interchange of benefits. There are three types of reciprocity: direct, indirect, and generalized.  The image to the right from plosone.org helps distinguish them.  Direct reciprocity is a tit-for-tat exchange of benefits by two actors.  Indirect reciprocity occurs when an altruist is rewarded by third parties for behaving generously towards others.  Generalized reciprocity is an anonymous, “pay it forward” model.

Many animals lack the cognitive skills required for the evolution of direct or indirect reciprocity.  Short term memory makes them incapable of identifying specific individuals and associating them with past acts of altruism.  But advanced memory isn’t necessary for the evolution of generalized reciprocity, which follows a simpler rule: help anyone if helped by someone.  It’s easier for a biologist to try to explain why animals sometimes incur fitness costs to help non-kin using the generalized reciprocity model.

In an article titled “The Evolution of Generalized Reciprocity on Social Interaction Networks,” Michael Taborsky and Gerrit Sander van Doorn of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution use theoretical models to identify types of social network structures that support evolution of generalized reciprocity. The results of Taborsky and van Doorn’s experiment suggest that when cooperators are rare, sparse networks with low connectivity are conducive to generalized reciprocity because the future probability of being rewarded for an altruistic act is greater.  In other words, your chances of being on the receiving end of an altruistic act go up when you interact frequently with a small number of social partners versus infrequently with a large number. The authors also found that a modular network structure supports generalized reciprocity for two reasons. First, a small “neighborhood” of 100% altruists is well-protected against exploitation by uncooperative defectors.  Second, in a population with a majority of altruists modularity increases the collective yield of “benefit” by increasing the average number of steps made during a random walk on the network before the “pay-it-forward” process is terminated by a defector.

The results of this study got the wheels in my head turning.  A theoretical computer model tells us generalized reciprocity is more likely to evolve when there is frequent interaction with a small number of social partners and modular network structure.  Three important questions follow.  First, can we use this knowledge to actively structure biomimetic human social networks that improve the probability of reciprocity, and thereby cooperation?  Second, when it comes to humans and high-level brain function how do factors such as a solid memory of people’s past behavior change the dynamics of cooperation?  And the third question, which the rest of this post attempts to answer: Can existing research from non-biology fields help us come up with new biological research questions about reciprocity, so that through further experimentation we might improve our biological understanding of the phenomenon?

At least three bodies of research outside the field of biology may help flesh out our biological understanding of reciprocity, and by consequence, improve our ability to build a biomimetic “environment” that supports cooperation. The first is research in the field of sociology on the influence of social networks.  The second is research by political theorists on rationality and cooperation in experimental public goods games.  The third is research by industrial-organizational psychologists on the effectiveness of team-based design.  Below I offer examples of references from each of these three academic fields that I feel could help biologists come up with a new set of research questions about the evolution and dynamics of reciprocity.

Sociology

Social scientist (and physician) Nicholas Christakis is a leading researcher on social factors that affect health, health care, and longevity.  Research findings presented in his 2010 TED Talk, “The Hidden Influence of Social Networks,” suggest that an individual’s emotional and physical health are influenced by the emotional and physical health of members of their social network.  Influence extends through three degrees of separation such that your health is impacted by the health of a friend of a friend of a friend.  Research question: Which factor has more influence over speed of evolution of generalized reciprocity, percentage of altruists in a population, or the average degrees of separation between an altruist and any other member of the social network?

Australian criminologist John Braithwaite conducted research on factors influencing crime rates for his 1989 book Crime, Shame, and Reintegration. His research suggests most crime is committed by people with fewer connections in their social network, or by people who expect that social connections will not last. As a result, crime is committed disproportionately in areas with high residential mobility.  Research question: Is generalized reciprocity in nature more prevalent in stable, sedentary communities?

Political Theory

Lucky for me, as I was grappling with questions about reciprocity and conditions conducive to its evolution, I was simultaneously reading a political theory book recommended to me by UAkron Conflict Management professor Bill Lyons.  The 2006 book written by Michael Taylor is titled Rationality and the Ideology of Disconnection.  Part three of the book, titled “Living in unity, doing your part: rationality, recognition, and reciprocity,” was most helpful.  This section explored human behavior in experimental public goods games to determine conditions under which people appear motivated by a norm of reciprocity.

An example of an experimental public goods game is one in which each player is given a sum of money and invited to contribute some or all of it to the public good.  Contributions to the public good are multiplied by two, and that total is divided equally amongst all group members.  Clearly, there is a higher payoff for the player that contributes nothing, (the same way there is a higher fitness payoff in nature for a hungry animal that eats food shared by non-relatives in the community, but does not share his own); however, even when this experimental public goods game is played once among total strangers who do not communicate, each player contributes an average 40-60% of their money to the public good.  The behavior of human players in experimental public goods games defies common sense the same way some natural organisms defy common sense by cooperating with non-kin in nature.

I also find it interesting that in repeated public goods games rate of cooperation increases if 1) players are allowed to communicate with one another, 2) players are face-to-face when making decisions, 3) if players are allowed, for a small fee, to “punish” free-riders. Under conditions like these, rate of cooperation often rises until monetary contributions from most players near 100%.  I would be interested to learn whether the group achieves near perfect cooperation quicker if the experimenter “plants” a number of perceived strangers at the start of the game who go “all in” from the get go.  Research question: If the results of the experiment I just described show that level of generosity, not just whether or not other players are generous, is “contagious” – could we advance Taborsky and van Doorn’s experimental results by complicating their theoretical model with a new variable –scalable generosity?

Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychology

Literature in I-O psychology suggests team-based organizations are more efficient than individual-based, “every man for himself” organizations.  For example, in a 1977 Harvard Business Review article, “How Volvo adapts work to people,” then Volvo CEO Pehr Gyllenhammar demonstrates how his company’s shift from individuals in an assembly line to self-controlled work teams brought tremendous success.  Perhaps it is because a modular, team-based organization, where a small number of employees (ideally 7?)  interact frequently, supports the evolution of reciprocity…of cooperative workplace behavior.  In the same article, Gyllenhammar talks about the new role of managers in a team-based organization. Managers shift from directors to facilitators.  Instead of controlling employees, they create and maintain an environment where employees feel comfortable consulting with one another.  Research Question: In a non-human community, are their internal or external forces analogous to managers that function to facilitate evolution of generalized reciprocity?

The results of experiments built around these research questions may improve our biological understanding of reciprocity.  With a better understanding of the dynamics of reciprocity and conditions conducive to its evolution, we may be able to build human environments much more supportive of cooperation than those we already have in place.  High hopes for the future of biomimicry!

For those who aren’t familiar, de-extinction involves reviving extinct species by using bits of preserved DNA, or manufacturing synthetic DNA that codes for traits the extinct species is known to have exhibited (like a long tail, brown fur, sharp fangs, etc).  DNA can be transformed into germ cells (precursors of eggs and sperm), transplanted into a surrogate mother representing the closest living relative species, and carried to term.  Sound like a method similar to that used to clone Dolly the sheep? It is…and the same concerns associated with cloning animals apply to de-extinction, as well as a number of others.

The de-extinction movement has received considerable attention in recent months.  Large, block letters on the cover of National Geographic’s April 2013 issue read: “REVIVING EXTINCT SPECIES.”   A March 2013 article featured in Scientific American asked the ethically loaded question: “will we kill of today’s animals if we revive extinct ones?” An independently organized TED conference, “TEDxDeExtinction,” which convened in Washington D.C. on March 15, 2013, was the first-ever public exploration of the topic.  Twenty-five of the world’s experts on de-extinction gave talks at the March 15 conference, including Carl Zimmer, the author of the aforementioned National Geographic article.  (Further reading on de-extinction can be found at The Long Now Foundation). Given the growing intrigue surrounding this idea of de-extinction, we thought it would be worthwhile to write a post in an effort to raise awareness in the biomimicry community and ask our colleagues a few burning questions.

I first learned about de-extinction by listening to Steven Brand’s February 2013 TEDTalk ,“The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready?”  Both Emily and I were instantaneously repulsed by the concept, and scared to learn that a number of high profile scientists are advocating for it.  I’m no expert on the topic, but my training in biotechnology leads me to a number of concerns, as does Emily’s coursework in Technology and the Human Prospect a class developed and taught by an outstanding professor, Paul Pinet, at Colgate University.

First and foremost, what’s the real motive behind the de-extinction movement?  Do we want to bring back extinct species purely for their ecosystem value, or for their functional value as it relates exclusively to humans (e.g. crop pollination)? Do we seek to expand biodiversity through de-extinction, or are we simply hooked by it’s sci-fi coolness?  Michael Archer, a paleontologist at the University of New South Wales who has championed de-extinction for years once said: “If we’re talking about species we drove extinct, then I think we have an obligation to try to do this [bring them back to life].”  But I’m forced to wonder, is de-extinction just a way to assuage our guilt for the harm we’ve inflicted on our earthly neighbors?

Second, what is the root of the problem? What caused the species to become extinct in the first place?  If it was a recent extinction, is human-driven climate change to blame?  Could a revived species thrive in an existing ecosystem or would that have to reconstructed as well?  Relatedly, did the extinction of a keystone species cause a cascade of domino extinctions that affected the species in question? Was the extinct species maladaptive? If it could not compete, why bring it back?  This last question is particularly relevant to the practice of biomimicry.  After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival (Biomimicry 3.8). An extinct species might simply represent a collection of failed survival strategies.

Third, is it responsible to invest resources in de-extinction which might be invested elsewhere?  In 2012, approximately 20,000 species were listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Most people don’t even realize that in their lifetime they could bear witness to the extinction of a number of well known species…that their children could grow up in a world where they’d never have the opportunity to see a wild (or captive) hummingbird, peacock, Grevy’s zebra, Przewalski horse, Rothschild Giraffe, howler monkey, etc.  Why invest our time, energy, and money researching how to bring back extinct species, when we could invest it in keeping them here in the first place?  Before we can even consider giving an extinct species a second go on this planet, we should work towards solving some of the environmental problems which make earth a sub-par habitat.  Besides, we’ve only identified an estimated 10% of species existing today.  We need to achieve a broader understanding of our planet’s biodiversity, the system of species which could be positively or negatively impacted by de-extinction, before we jump the gun.

Fourth, what are the implications if de-extinction becomes commonplace?  What does our brave new world look like?  The following questions are relevant to cloning and synthetic biology, as well.  If de-extinction is regularly practiced, will we still work to conserve extant creatures?  If we are habitualized to think any species can be brought back to life, will we ever learn to live sustainably?   We will ever accept that we are simply a species among species, one vote in a parliament of 30 million (Janine Benyus).  Will we bring back wooly mammoths only to slaughter them for their 15-foot tusks all over again?  Will we be tempted into favoritism, allowing only favorite species to predominate. Lest we forget species favoritism has already resulted in decreased agricultural diversity.  Organisms brought back from the dead will not be identical to their natural predecessors.  Could a slight difference (in health for example) lead to unpredictable properties, and irreversibly contamine the existing gene pool?  Dolly the cloned sheep died from  a progressive lung disease, and the first de-extincted bucardo died after 10 minutes due to severe birth defects.

At the start of my education in biotechnology, I was all for genetically modified organisms.  The more I learned, the more my mindset changed.  Yes, biotechnology is advancing quickly and becoming more precise, and it may provide solutions to human problems of famine, vitamin A shortage, and pest-resistance.  But is biotechnology the ONLY solution to these problems? Is it the safest? We can’t let biotech distract us from the root causes of problems like extinction.  I know I would rather devote our careers to the search for sustainable solutions to our design problems that are more dependably compatible with the natural world.

We look forward to your reactions to this post!

PS. Thanks Emily for your great editing work and adding some powerful thoughts.

Just finished a great book by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom titled The Starfish and the Spider: the Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.  Thanks to Sally Parker of GLBio for the recommendation.  I’d suggest anyone interested in social science applications of biomimicry, namely biomimetic business development, give it a read.  A free preview (intro and chapter 1) is available online.

The authors compare traditional top-down organizations to spiders.  If you cut of a spider’s head, it dies.  In contrast, a decentralized organization is more like a starfish.  If you cut off a starfish’s leg, it grows a new one, and the severed leg itself can grow an entirely new starfish.  This is because the starfish’s major organs are replicated in each arm. (but don’t take the analogy at face value, decentralization with respect to organization is more about having multifunctional employees versus clone skillsets) Brafman and Beckstrom explore the resilience achieved through decentralization using case studies like Wikipedia, Craigslist, and Skype.

But in my opinion, the most interesting case study is eBay – a hybrid spider-starfish organization.  What eBay has opted to decentralize, is its seller policing.  Buyers rate sellers, incentivizing honest product descriptions and dependably on-time deliveries.  Established sellers with high ratings are able to earn an 8.1% premium on their products.  In essence, every buyer rating increases eBay’s network value.  The collective intelligence (swarm intelligence!) of the ratings contributors has emergent value that far exceeds the sum of the parts.  Many new organizations (perhaps more appropriately referenced as systems) take full advantage of this principle of swarm intelligence.  99designs,  PeoplePerHour, Threadless, and Quirky are great examples.  [Side note: who else thinks there should be a Quirky that caters to our most unencumbered thinkers: kids 10 and under?!]

A commonality between all these companies is how freely they share company statistics a traditional management team might keep close to the chest.  For example, the homepage of 99designs, a project in crowdsourcing for logo/web/book cover/other designs, has real-time stats about the number of design contests currently open, total number design contests hosted by the site to date, total $s prize money currently offered by open contests, and total $ designer payouts in the previous month.  Aside from swarm intelligence, it seems company advertising might also be capitalizing on herd behavior.  Every time the counter clicks, more designers are compelled to join the 99designs community.

Lastly, The Starfish and the Spider left me contemplating: can we directly apply anything we know about the architecture of resilient computer systems to our organizations?  A lecture given by Keith Moore of HP at UAkron a few weeks ago on parallel distributed processing led me to this question.  Parallel distributed processors are more adept than traditional processors at minimizing unplanned outages caused largely by what Keith referred to as “change management.”  Sounds familiar…

 

TED  (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is a nonprofit devoted to “ideas worth spreading.”  TED hosts two annual five-day conferences, traditionally one in California and the other in Scotland.  Each conference features 18 minute lectures (TEDTalks) by 50 innovative thinkers from all over the world. Some speakers are established celebrities – for example, Bono discussed progress made in eradicating extreme poverty this year – while others are previously unrecognized geniuses discovered through an auditing process (TED’s Worldwide Talent Search).  Lectures are intermixed with shorter presentations of music, theater, and comedy.

TED conferences are attended by 2000+ lucky guests including many industry moguls, and are consistently sold out a year in advance.  Lucky for us, Bill is our in!  Bill is a part of TED’s Open Translation Project.  The goal of the project is to provide access to TEDTalks beyond the english-speaking world.  Bill Hsiung translates TEDTalks by adding Traditional Chinese subtitles. TED has thanked Bill by inviting him to attend TED conferences (in-person or by live stream) for free.  He’s taken full advantage of this privilege since it was bestowed upon him in 2009.

This year, Bill live streamed TED’s west coast Feb 25-March 1 conference from Akron, Ohio and invited Daphne, me, and a few professors to join (MANY THANKS BILL!) as he is permitted to share his access with a limited number of people.  The speakers this year were phenomenal.  My favorites:

1. Phil Hansen, “The Art of the Imperfect”
This is a MUST SEE.  Phil Hansen is an artist who has embraced his limitation – a hand that shakes violently as a result of nerve damage – as a driver of creativity.  Biomimicry practitioners share a similar ethic, acknowledging that by respecting our limits, we can learn to manufacture in life-friendly temperatures, power our machines with sunlight, and make the most of local resources.  As Benyus wrote in her 1997 book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, we can learn from Nature, which “unfurls her colors with virtuosity, using limits as a source of power, a focusing mechanism.”  Addressing our earthly limits will empower us to find biomimetic solutions to the environmental problems we have brought upon ourselves.

2. John McWhorter, “The Linguistic Miracle of Texting”
Another favorite, McWhorter’s TEDTalk is about the emergent complexity of texting, which he refers to a “fingered speech.”  Text messaging software initiated an expansion of human’s linguistic repertoire to include a language of writing-like-speaking.  (In the context of biomimicry, this sounds to me like self-organization in action)  In a text, “slash” serves the same purpose a pause would in spoken conversation, indicating a topic change.  Research shows that being bilingual or bidialectic gives a person a cognitive advantage, so who’s to say texting isn’t making us smarter?

3. Mark Shaw, Ultra-Ever Dry Demo
Super cool demo of a new nanoparticle coating called Ultra-Ever Dry® which results in superhydrophobicity of the surface to which it is applied (160-170 degree contact angle!).  See how it works in the “inspiring videos” section of our blog.

 

Our newly established Biomimicry PhD offered through UAkron’s Integrated Biosciences PhD program has started a buzz across campus.  And it’s not just biologists and designers talking, the interest in biomimicry has been expressed broadly across a variety of academic departments.  In response to the hype, we’ve started a biweekly biomimicry reading group, and invited a number of professors and community members to participate.  Participants to date have included conflict studies, macroeconomics, biology, studio art, organizational development, chemistry, and housing development professionals.  As you can imagine, our conversations bounce up, down, and around, but always end up going somewhere meaningful.

Most recently, we read a fantastic article by Mark Earl’s titled: “Advertising to the Herd: How understanding our true nature challenges the way we think about advertising and market research.”  This framed our discussion about how public buy-in strategies of a start-up company might cater to human herd behavior.  Some other interesting areas of inquiry we’ve touched upon in past discussions include:

1. The potential of swarm intelligence to inform retail store layouts, increasingly formatted to fit local shopping behavior

2. The need to reevaluate the traits we value in corporate leaders and management teams in light of research conducted at MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence.  A 2011 MIT study (video minutes 51:30-1:02:25) found that collective intelligence of a group of people is not strongly correlated with the average individual intelligence or maximum individual intelligence of group members.  Rather, group performance on a variety of tasks increased with average social sensitivity of group members, evenness of turn-taking in conversation, and the proportion of female group members (likely mediated by the social sensitivity factor).  Today, management teams are male-dominated, and business leaders are a notably low-scoring population in terms of empathy (i.e. social sensitivity). A transformative shift in business leader character evaluation might be required if we really want to improve the way we do business.

Northeast Ohio has proven ripe with opportunity for environmentalists.  A week doesn’t pass without a nature-appreciation or sustainability themed event coming onto our radar.  Every event I’ve attended has had an impressive turnout.  Today was no different.  The Cleveland Museum of Natural History hosted an estimated 250 guests for its 10th annual Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival.  The festival featured 13 films (program available here) varying in length from four minutes to 44 minutes.  One of the films was particularly moving.  “Chasing Water” is a 2011 film directed by photographer Pete McBride, and runs 18 minutes.  McBride’s family owns a ranch in Colorado which runs on an irrigation system fed by the Colorado River.  The film documents McBride’s journey, born of pure curiosity, to trace the water that sustains his family’s livelihood down river to the sea.  He follows the flow for 1500 miles at which point it abruptly ends in a disparaging landscape of stagnant pools laden with plastic waste and other garbage. The realization is astonishing…“For 6 million years water from the Colorado river emptied into the ocean, since 1998 it has not.”  The film’s imagery is stunning and it’s message powerful.  Without a visual aid like this short film, it’s difficult to truly appreciate the stresses the human population is placing on clean water resources.  The global problem manifests itself right in our backyard.  Plenty of cities in Texas have resorted to importing water from hundreds of miles away!

Biomimetic solutions to water access and management keep me hopeful!  The 2012-2013 Biomimicry Student Design Challenge solicited solutions to this very issue.  You can read about the first round winners of this Biomimicry 3.8 competition here.