Resource abundance and the critical transition to cooperation.

ABSTRACT: Cooperation is abundant in nature, occurring at all levels of biological complexity. Yet cooperation is continually threatened by subversion from noncooperating cheaters. Previous studies have shown that cooperation can nevertheless be maintained when the benefits that cooperation provides to relatives outweigh the associated costs. These fitness costs and benefits are not fixed properties, but can be affected by the environment in which populations reside. Here, we describe how one environmental factor, resource abundance, decisively affects the evolution of cooperative public goods production in two independent evolving systems. In the Avida digital evolution platform, populations evolved in environments with different levels of a required resource, whereas populations of Vibrio cholerae

SUBMITTER: Connelly BD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5382106 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature