Domestication syndrome in cereal grains is commonly thought to be the product of domestication through a combination of direct artificial selection and indirect natural selection by humans. We propose an agent-based model of grain domestication. We simulate cereal grains with four genes that impact their reproductive cycle undergoing harvesting and selective planting by simulated humans. When direct artificial selection is applied to one gene domestication syndrome emerges in the other genes as a result of indirect natural selection. In the absence of direct artificial selection no domestication syndrome emerged, consistent with periods of predomestication cultivation in human history. Domesticated variants are strongest when humans select for traits inconsistent with the wild type traits, and weakest when humans select for traits consistent with the wild type.

We simulate an ant colony in which an ant’s genetics can determine behavioral, morphological and physiological differences between workers and queens. We show that depending on the benefits conferred to workers and queens different reproductive division of labor strategies evolve. In particular, we observe both generalist colonies and colonies with specialized worker and queen castes. Generalist colonies were subject to selection for optimal response thresholds. Colonies with castes evolved a discrete queen caste and either a discrete or continuous worker caste. As a secondary experiment we expose our evolved colonies to a changing environment to test their ability to adapt cooperative foraging strategies and we find all reproductive division of labor strategies were effective at cooperative foraging.

In the basic public goods game the Nash equilibrium is to defect, that is, to share nothing. Resource sharing can evolve via multilevel selection on groups that have low variation within the group but have high variation between groups. In our simulation agents forage at random, can choose to share resources with others in their group as part of a public goods game, and if they have enough resources they can reproduce. We show that when there is a single group or large overlapping groups that individual selection leads to a population of defectors. We also show that when there is a number of isolated groups that multilevel selection leads to a population of sharers. In our simulation, agents compete indirectly for space in the population and we find that higher share percentages correlate with larger population sizes. Finally we also find that as the benefit for sharing decreases our agents share more with one another to achieve the same benefits.

We use an agent-based social simulation to study the effects of role reassignment on resource management in a human organization. As a model organization we use the 446 Force Support Squadron of the United States Air Force. We simulate different role reassignment policies where members of the organization can be reassigned at their request, at the request of the organization, or as a combination of both of these policies. We also consider at what point in an individual’s career is the best time to change roles. We conclude that a compromise between organizational needs and individual needs results in higher productivity. In addition we conclude that mid-career reassignment is better for the organization than early or late career reassignment.

Sexual reproductive behavior has a necessary social coordination component as willing and capable partners must both be in the right place at the right time. It has recently been demonstrated that many social organizations that support sexual reproduction can evolve in the absence of social coordination between agents (e.g. herding, assortative mating, and natal philopatry). In this paper we explore these results by including social transfer mechanisms to our agents and contrasting their reproductive behavior with a control group without social transfer mechanisms. We conclude that similar behaviors emerge in our social learning agents as those that emerged in the non-social learning agents. Social learners were more inclined towards natal philopatry. Social learners also evolved a culture of eusociality including reproductive division of labor.

Divergent cumulative cultural evolution occurs when the cultural evolutionary trajectory diverges from the biological evolutionary trajectory. We consider the conditions under which divergent cumulative cultural evolution can occur. We hypothesize that two conditions are necessary. First that genetic and cultural information are stored separately in the agent. Second cultural information must be transferred horizontally between agents of different generations. We implement a model with these properties and show evidence of divergent cultural evolution under both cooperative and competitive selection pressures.

We present a model for evolving agents using both genetic and cultural inheritance mechanisms. Within each agent our model maintains two distinct information stores we call the genome and the memome. Processes of adaptation are modeled as evolutionary processes at each level of adaptation (phylogenetic, ontogenetic, sociogenetic). We review relevant competing models and we show how our model improves on previous attempts to model genetic and cultural evolutionary processes. In particular we argue our model can achieve divergent gene-culture co-evolution.