Abstract:

Living organisms acquire, store, process and transmit information and, as such, information transfer plays a central role in the biology of most species [1]. This is particularly true in social species where communication plays a pivotal organising role, allowing the transfer of vital information among colony members, for example to detect predators and find food sources [2]. While much is known on the neurophysiological processes by which signals are produced, conducted, perceived and interpreted, the conditions conducive to the evolution of communication and the paths by which reliable systems of communication become established remain largely unknown because communication does not leave a fossil record. This is a particularly challenging problem because efficient communication requires tight co-evolution between the signal emitted and the response elicited [3]. Here we conducted repeated trials of experimental evolution with robots that could produce visual signals to provide information on food location. We found that communication readily evolves when colonies are composed of genetically similar individuals and/or when selection acts at the colony level. We identified several distinct systems of communication that differed in their efficiency. Once a given system of communication was well established, it constrained the evolution of more efficient communication systems. Under individual selection, the ability to produce visual signals resulted in the evolution of deceptive communication strategies in colonies of unrelated robots and a concomitant decrease in colony performance. This study generates predictions on the evolutionary conditions that may lead to the emergence of sophisticated forms of communication, including cooperative communication and deceptive signalling, and it provides guidelines for designing artificial evolutionary systems that may display spontaneous communication.