Fostering relations: first sex and marital timings for children raised by kin and non-kin carers

Kin adopting kin: In the best interest of the children?

2030’s Seniors : Kin and Step-Kin

Demographic computer microsimulation is applied to produce projections of numbers and distributions of close kin for the U.S. elderly of 2030. This paper reports results for the non-black population, with special emphasis on the numbers and possible roles of step-kin. The projections indicate that the elderly of 2030 are likely to be moderately deprived in terms of numbers of close living biolo...

Non-kin cooperation in bats.

Many bats are extremely social. In some cases, individuals remain together for years or even decades and engage in mutually beneficial behaviours among non-related individuals. Here, we summarize ways in which unrelated bats cooperate while roosting, foraging, feeding or caring for offspring. For each situation, we ask if cooperation involves an investment, and if so, what mechanisms might ensu...

Cross - fostering as a means to study kin recognition

C ross-fostering techniques in which infants are taken from their genetic parents and reared by unrelated foster parents have been widely used in behavioural research to investigate several developmental questions. Here we address some of the central issues involved in using cross-fostering to study kin recognition where it has been applied frequently. We do so by first outlining general princi...

Kin-Selection: The Rise and Fall of Kin-Cheaters

We demonstrate the existence of altruism via kin selection in artificial life and explore its nuances. We do so in the Avida system through a setup that is based on the behavior of colicinogenic bacteria: Organisms can kill unrelated organisms in a given radius but must kill themselves to do so. Initially, we confirm results found in the bacterial world: Digital organisms do sacrifice themselve...