Fig. 1: Task switching and four resource sharing scenarios.
From: Resource sharing is sufficient for the emergence of division of labour
a Our model assumes that individuals can switch (solid arrows) between two states: foraging (green) and nursing (blue). While foraging, individuals retrieve resources (black dots) from the environment and store these resources in a temporary storage organ (grey circle). As long as resources are in the storage organ, they can in principle be shared with other individuals. Once they are integrated into the individual’s body (green dots in foraging individuals; blue dots in nursing individuals) they contribute to the individual’s nutrition level and can no longer be shared. As foraging is triggered by a low nutrition level, foraging individuals have on average lower nutrition levels than nursing individuals. b Four resource sharing scenarios considered in our study: (1) No sharing: Resources are not shared; foraging individuals consume all resources themselves. (2) Equal sharing: Foraging individuals share the collected resources equally between themselves and a nursing individual. (3) Dominance-based sharing: Each individual has a pre-assigned dominance value and resources are shared in relation to these dominance values: The dominant individual obtains a larger proportion of the collected resources. (4) Nutrition-based sharing: As in (3), but now the dominance level of an individual is not pre-assigned and constant, but proportional to the individual’s nutrition level.
