150 AGGREGATION, COMPETITION AND CYCLES 



COOPERATION 



Origin and Nature. Cooperation is the universal outcome of simple 

 aggregation; in fact, it appears axiomatic that community life is im- 

 possible \Yithout it in at least some degree (Kropotkin, 1915). Even 

 when the benefits are slight or obscure at the lowest levels, they must 

 outweigh the disadvantages to render the community more than a 

 transient affair. The advantage must be mutual, though often far 

 from equal, and it may exist along with definite, though less critical, 

 handicaps. In essence, then, cooperation is to be considered as a 

 dynamic social process in which mutual benefit of some sort consti- 

 tutes the chief bond and overrules the unavoidable disadvantages of 

 massing or crowding. In the family, this bond is at its strongest, 

 even when the members are counted by the thousands. It is less con- 

 trolling in the colony, except when this has an adoptive pattern, and 

 in communities of higher rank it breaks up into a looser complex of 

 relations between families, colonies, and larger groupings. 



It is obvious that, while cooperation rests upon mutual tolerance 

 in terms of habits and space, its positive values are derived from the 

 conservation of energy and material, especially food, from division 

 of labor, and from increased care, parental or nutricial. The analysis 

 of any cooperative community must be directed primarily to these 

 processes, as has been so ably exemplified by Wheeler in particular 

 (1923), and the success of community life is to be measured in such 

 terms, with adequate recognition of the attendant disoperation or 

 competition. So vast is this theme, especially in its human connota- 

 tions, that even the barest outline is beyond the scope of the present 

 treatment and little more can be attempted than to point out its major 

 features in the biotic community. Of the extensive literature in this 

 field, none exhibits so much of the spirit of dynamic ecology as 

 Wheeler's "Social Life among the Insects," and the interested reader is 

 referred to this as the most illuminating introduction to the subject. 



Cooperation in Plant Community and Matrix. Though coopera- 

 tion is generally on a much lower level in plant than in animal com- 

 munities, it does occur and is not without significance. Its beginnings 

 are to be seen in the cenobic algae, such as Gloeocapsa, in which the 

 gelatinous sheaths of the initial cells serve to protect the whole family, 

 or IMicrocoleus, whose outer filaments secrete a similar protection. 

 In Nostoc and its relatives, division of labor appears in addition to a 

 protective matrix, and community functions are assumed by spore and 

 heterocyst, while another type of differentiation takes place in the 

 motile Volvox. Similar phenomena are to be found among the Protozoa 

 and are well exemplified by the plantlike slime molds, in which move- 



