Cultural lineages are based on learned social traditions that are stable for several generations. When cultural lineages also reflect common ancestry and/or are shared by individuals that live together they are called clans. The existence of clans among killer whales has been previously proposed but has not been confirmed. Here, we show that clans exist among resident type killer whales, Orcinu...

Purpose – To provide a mechanism for agents to form, maintain, and reason within medium-term coalitions, called clans, based upon the notions of trust and motivation. Design/methodology/approach – The model is based upon the notions of trust (representing an agent’s assessment of another’s honesty and reliability) and motivations (which represent an agent’s high-level goals). The paper describe...

We describe in this paper a novel approach to identify repeating circuit structures referred to as templates. The approach is based on a clan-based decomposition algorithm that has been successfully used in other domains 6, 5]. The algorithm discovers clans, a grouping of nodes in the circuit graph that have a natural aan-ity towards each other, and it hierarchically builds a parse tree of all ...

PURPOSE To characterize the molecular composition of cross-linked actin networks (CLANs) and the regulation of their formation by integrins in normal human trabecular meshwork (TM) cells. CLANs have been observed in steroid-treated and glaucomatous TM cells and have been suggested to contribute to decreased outflow facility by altering the contractility of the TM. METHODS Immunofluorescence m...

Multilevel societies, containing hierarchically nested social levels, are remarkable social structures whose origins are unclear. The social relationships of sperm whales are organized in a multilevel society with an upper level composed of clans of individuals communicating using similar patterns of clicks (codas). Using agent-based models informed by an 18-year empirical study, we show that c...

We study how norms can solve distributional conflict inside a clan and the efficient coordination of collective action in a conflict with an external enemy. We characterize a fully non-cooperative equilibrium in a finite game in which a self-enforcing norm coordinates the members on efficient collective action and on a peaceful distribution of the returns of collective action. JEL Classificatio...

Reptiles and mammals diverged over 300 million years ago, creating two parallel evolutionary lineages amongst terrestrial vertebrates. In reptiles, two main evolutionary lines emerged, one gave rise to Squamata, while the other gave rise to Testudines, Crocodylia and birds. In this study, we determined the genomic variable (V)-gene repertoire in reptiles corresponding to the three main immunogl...

Sperm whale social groups can be assigned to vocal clans based on their production of codas, short stereotyped patterns of clicks. It is currently unclear whether genetic variation could account for these behavioural differences. We studied mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation among sympatric vocal clans in the Pacific Ocean, using sequences extracted from sloughed skin samples. We sampled 194 i...