Eco-evolutionary feedbacks can rescue cooperation in microbial populations.

ABSTRACT: Bacterial populations whose growth depends on the cooperative production of public goods are usually threatened by the rise of cheaters that do not contribute but just consume the common resource. Minimizing cheater invasions appears then as a necessary mechanism to maintain these populations. However, that invasions result instead in the persistence of cooperation is a prospect that has yet remained largely unexplored. Here, we show that the demographic collapse induced by cheaters in the population can actually contribute to the rescue of cooperation, in a clear illustration of how ecology and evolution can influence each other. The effect is made possible by the interplay between spatial constraints and the essentiality of the shared resource. We validate this result by carefully combin

SUBMITTER: Moreno-Fenoll C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5304172 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature