Assessing the role of social development in the evolution of cooperation

The role of space-time structuring processes has recently come into focus as an important ingredient in the understanding of cooperative interactions in dif-explores a similar role for a diierent sort of contex-tual process: phenotypical development under social conditions. A minimal ontogenetic, reaction-network model maps newborn phenotypes into adult ones according to genetic constitution and parental innuence. In this way three coupled processes determine the distribution of behaviors within a population: selection, development and spatial organization. The presence of dynamic \developmental structures" is shown to play an important role in stabilizing cooperative coordination even when individual costs are against it. Resulting coordination levels prove to be much more stable than with spatial distribution alone. Some of the resulting self-promoting and self-regulating developmental structures are discussed.