Kin selection works according to the principle:
rB>C
r = the genetic relatedness of the recipient to the actor, often defined as the probability that a gene picked randomly from each at the same locus is identical by descent.
B = the additional reproductive benefit gained by the recipient of the altruistic act,
C = the reproductive cost to the individual performing the act.
My idea is that if you help a kin cell reproduce, then when you go into the editor you will get a discount as if you had 150 MP.
Perhaps, with an increase in the value of sociality, the size of the cell flock will increase, with the help of which a discount will be obtained.
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Are you sure such a large bonus would be necessary to encourage the behavour of helping one’s species’ reproduction?
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a potentially better way to make it be is
if a kin cell reproduces, you get a discount as if you had +(100*relatedness)MP, but it should probably be unlocked by the nucleus(since multicellularity evolved to make the cells have a higher chance of genetically identical cells reproducing, and multicellularity is planned to be gated behind the nucleus), and once you get your discount high enough, you get your timestep size decreased, and your discount for your playstyle reset to 0
then if you manage to get 100 MP of discount, you could have the option to enter the editor without reproducing yourself!
and 100*relatedness (relatedness value is always a %) results in a system where helping your parents or children reproduce gets you 50MP of discount, since you share 50% of your genes with them, then siblings, grandchildren, and grandparents are 25 MP, then children of your siblings, great grandparents, great grandchildren, and siblings of your parents are 12.5 mp, then first cousins are 6.25 mp, etc.
identical twins, however, are 100%
and 50 MP of discount would be a 25% discount
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So if you helped the sister cell you always spawn alongside with reproduce, you’d get twice the regular amount of MP in the following editor session?
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Some thoughts on implementing kin selection: When you move the sociality slider towards sociality, your creature will have a “family” consisting of its close relatives, if you promote the reproduction of relatives, you can get a discount to mp.
One of the main reasons for kin selection is competition: when there is a lot of competition in a biome, it will be more profitable for you to have a “family” than to be a loner, since thanks to this, resources are received by relatives with a high genetic similarity, and not by competitors.
Perhaps this can be implemented in a simpler way: If a resource distributed in a patch is fully used (i.e. there is fierce competition for it), then sociality will give discounts, and solitude will increase prices in mp.
An example of such a situation would be photosynthetic bacteria in a fairly populated patch where photosynthetic bacteria began to compete for resources and those who formed swarms won because they did not give up resources to less closely related bacteria.
@Deus What about this idea?
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How would this work if you just migrated to a new biome?
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I think we will migrate with the flock.
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Could microbes become “eusocial”?
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Multicellular organisms are essentially eusocial microbes.
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I meant more like ant eusocial colonies here.
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that would be a multicellular creature with all its cells being able to move as they please, like some types of sponge!
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Hm. Makes one wonder how versatile could one’s tissues just get ingame…
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Social organization is a pretty complicated discussion which also ties into the society stage eventually, so I am hesitant on making a concept for that until we understand more of the macroscopic stage. It does generally sound like a good idea to have it so that a certain amount of sociality results in you spawning with others of your kind.
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By the way, I presume you’d need to have like max sociality to become multicellular, correct?
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Not necessarily. Sociality could correspond to likelihood to becoming colonial in non-exclusively colonial organisms. Once you’re properly multicellular, behavior would correspond to the behavior of the organism as a whole as opposed to the individual cells.
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But I can’t imagine a species of microbes that actively cannibalize eachother going multicellular. There probably should be a minimum sociality cap below which one cannot become multicelled.
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there is that goop that grows on and travels between sunken whale carcasses, which the cells of likely cannibalize eachother when there’s nothing else available to eat, but normally probably don’t
and having cells that eat eachother would also allow you to specialize your own cells into plastids, and have the ones that specialize into plastids dump all their chromosomes except one pair that contains all the genes they need to do their job, and maybe another that contains the genes for the cell cycle(macronutrients could be produced by the host cell)
all you really need for a species of cannibalistic cells to become multicellular is a reason to stick together, which can be anything from gasses in the atmosphere that you can’t handle well, to lack of gasses you need, to predation, to competition, and even to reproduction
and because of reasons stated above, cells that are able to cannibalize eachother, and will, but have a way to know not to, let you have plastids that evolve much faster than they normally can, since the genes that make them get recombined when you reproduce
and they’d be more likely to recover from cancer, cause the conditions that cancer cause are the same ones that would be the most likely cause for them to cannibalize(especially in the whale goo), since tumors are very energy hungry, and starve the rest of the body, so body cells would likely eat tumors
and digesting an infected or defective cell is an effective way to prevent the spread/creation of diseases, especially with the right enzymes
and, depending on how they know when it’s time to eat eachother, and which cells to eat/not eat, they might even be able to stop digesting a sister cell after eating it
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By the way, I suppose high solitarity values would strain the effectiveness of signalling agent’s commands, correct?
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ooh sounds cool ! What’s the goop called? i’d love to do some research into it
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I recall I also heard of this goop before, but the only thing I recall was I think that it is red.
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