Before revision:  Examples are: individual cells forming multicellular systems whose various parts pool and share nutrients; pack animals pooling and sharing prey; families firms, or modern nation states pooling and sharing financial resources. In these examples, each atomistic decision, at a point in time, of the better-off entity to cooperate poses a puzzle: the better-off entity will book an immediate net loss -- why should it cooperate? For each example, specific explanations have been put forward. Here we point out a very general mechanism -- a sufficient null model -- whereby cooperation can evolve. The mechanism is based the following insight : natural growth processes tend to be multiplicative . In multiplicative growth, ergodicity is broken in such a way that fluctuations have a net-negative effect on the time-average growth rate , although they have no effect on the growth rate of the ensemble average.
After revision:  Its ubiquity in nature poses a conundrum. Whenever two entities cooperate, one must willingly relinquish something of value to the other. Why is this apparent altruism favored in evolution? Classical solutions assume a net fitness gain in a cooperative transaction which, through reciprocity or relatedness, finds its way back from recipient to donor. We seek the source of this fitness gain. Our analysis rests on the insight that evolutionary processes are typically multiplicative and noisy. Fluctuations have a net negative effect on the time-average growth rate , although they have no effect on the growth rate of the ensemble average.