The effect of conflicting pressures on the evolution of division of labor.

ABSTRACT: Within nature, many groups exhibit division of labor. Individuals in these groups are under seemingly antagonistic pressures to perform the task most directly beneficial to themselves and to potentially perform a less desirable task to ensure the success of the group. Performing experiments to study how these pressures interact in an evolutionary context is challenging with organic systems because of long generation times and difficulties related to group propagation and fine-grained control of within-group and between-group pressures. Here, we use groups of digital organisms (i.e., self-replicating computer programs) to explore how populations respond to antagonistic multilevel selection pressures. Specifically, we impose a within-group pressure to perform a highly-rewarded role and a bet

SUBMITTER: Goldsby HJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4122366 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature