High relatedness maintains multicellular cooperation in a social amoeba by controlling cheater mutants.

ABSTRACT: The control of cheating is important for understanding major transitions in evolution, from the simplest genes to the most complex societies. Cooperative systems can be ruined if cheaters that lower group productivity are able to spread. Kin-selection theory predicts that high genetic relatedness can limit cheating, because separation of cheaters and cooperators limits opportunities to cheat and promotes selection against low-fitness groups of cheaters. Here, we confirm this prediction for the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum; relatedness in natural wild groups is so high that socially destructive cheaters should not spread. We illustrate in the laboratory how high relatedness can control a mutant that would destroy cooperation at low relatedness. Finally, we demonstrate that, as pre

SUBMITTER: Gilbert OM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1885602 | biostudies-literature | 2007 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature