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Updated: May 17, 2025

Monitoring Spatial Segregation in Surface Colonizing Microbial Populations
Published on: October 29, 2016
Revisiting the spaces of societies and the cooperation that sustains them
James Brooks1,2, Liran Samuni1
1Cooperative Evolution Lab, German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany jamesgerardbrooks@gmail.com lsamuni@dpz.eu.
Abstract:
We embrace Moffett's call for more rigorous definitions of social organizations but raise two intersecting critiques: (1) The spaces controlled by societies are not exclusively physical, and (2) cooperation is required to maintain control over spaces, physical or otherwise. We discuss examples of non-physical societal spaces across species and highlight the top-down group cooperation challenge that is maintaining them.
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