Social interactions generate complex selection patterns in virtual worlds

Understanding the influence of social interactions on individual fitness is key to improving our predictions of phenotypic evolution. However, we often overlook the different components of selection regimes arising from interactions among organisms, including social, correlational, and indirect selection. This is due to the challenging sampling efforts required in natural populations to measure phenotypes expressed during interactions and individual fitness. Furthermore, behaviours are crucial in mediating social interactions, yet few studies have explicitly quantified these selection components on behavioural traits. In this study, we capitalize on an online multiplayer videogame as a source of extensive data recording direct social interactions among prey, where prey collaborate to escape a predator in realistic ecological settings. We estimate natural and social selection and their contribution to total selection on behavioural traits mediating competition, cooperation, and predator-..., See Methods section in the Main Text of the manuscript and ESM for additional information, , # Social interactions generate complex selection patterns in virtual worlds
Year 2024 Journal Journal of Evolutionary Biology Authors F Santostefano, M Fraser Franco, PO Montiglio
file: df_social_selection.csv

## Description of the data and file structure

\#dt: date of match year-month-day
\#game_duration: game duration (sec)
\#crouching_duration: time spent hiding (sec)
\#chase_duration: time spent in chase (sec)
\#unhook_count: # times the player rescues another player
\#points: points earned (0 to 32000)
\#gen_duration: % resources acquired on a total of 500 (e.g. 100 1 generator, 200 2 generators, etc)
\#escaped: has the player survived the match? (1 yes, 0 no)
\#avg_social_crouching: average time spent hiding by the 3 social partners (sec)
\#avg_social_chase: average time spent in chase by the 3 social partners (sec)
\#avg_social_unhook:average # of times the 3 social partners unhook another player
\#avg_social_gen :average % resources acquired done by the 3 social partners
\#Zcr...