ASU Insight: Hot or not? A Huddler's Dilemma

David Haig - Professor of Biology
Harvard University
Hot or not? The huddler’s dilemma
 
Huddling for warmth is a simple cooperative behavior. Heat generation within a huddle is a public good with a private cost. Therefore, cooperators are potentially vulnerable to exploitation by free-riders. Behavioral studies in penguins, marmots, rats, and mice illustrate the benefits of huddling and the temptation to defect. Effects of imprinted genes in brown adipose tissue suggest that non-shivering thermogenesis has been an arena for intragenomic conflict.
 
Dr. David Haig is a George Putnam Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. His research is focused on maternal-fetal conflict in human pregnancy, plant  life-cycles, genetic conflicts within individual organisms, and genomic imprinting. Haig received his Ph.D. from Macquarie University in 1989. He is the author of many works including  Genomic imprinting and kinship (2002), The huddler’s dilemma: a cold shoulder or a warm inner glow (2010), and a contributing author of Evolution in health and disease (2007).