Evolution of division of labor on two public goods with continuous investments

Abstract

Species throughout the tree of life have evolved to produce multiple public goods, and they often exhibit division of labor, meaning that subpopulations have different allocations of effort across the goods. Despite a robust theoretical literature on mechanisms that lead to division of labor in specific domains, a general evolutionary game-theoretical analysis remains incomplete. Here we model labor as a continuous quantity and the resulting public goods as functions of labor contributed by all individuals using adaptive dynamics. We derive general conditions for the evolution of division of labor and categorize what forms of division may arise. We show that the adaptive dynamics of division of labor has three potential outcomes that differ in expected payoff and variance in payoff. Our findings indicate that the evolution of division of labor can have a diverse range of possible outcomes, with important consequences for fitness, variance in payoff, and the distribution of effort across the population.