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Strategy Diversity Stabilizes Mutualism through Investment Cycles, Phase Polymorphism, and Spatial Bubbles

There is continuing interest in understanding factors that facilitate the evolution and stability of cooperation within and between species. Such interactions will often involve plasticity in investment behavior, in response to the interacting partner's investments. Our aim here is to investiga...

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Autores principales: Boza, Gergely, Kun, Ádám, Scheuring, István, Dieckmann, Ulf
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3499242/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23166478
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002660
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author Boza, Gergely
Kun, Ádám
Scheuring, István
Dieckmann, Ulf
author_facet Boza, Gergely
Kun, Ádám
Scheuring, István
Dieckmann, Ulf
author_sort Boza, Gergely
collection PubMed
description There is continuing interest in understanding factors that facilitate the evolution and stability of cooperation within and between species. Such interactions will often involve plasticity in investment behavior, in response to the interacting partner's investments. Our aim here is to investigate the evolution and stability of reciprocal investment behavior in interspecific interactions, a key phenomenon strongly supported by experimental observations. In particular, we present a comprehensive analysis of a continuous reciprocal investment game between mutualists, both in well-mixed and spatially structured populations, and we demonstrate a series of novel mechanisms for maintaining interspecific mutualism. We demonstrate that mutualistic partners invariably follow investment cycles, during which mutualism first increases, before both partners eventually reduce their investments to zero, so that these cycles always conclude with full defection. We show that the key mechanism for stabilizing mutualism is phase polymorphism along the investment cycle. Although mutualistic partners perpetually change their strategies, the community-level distribution of investment levels becomes stationary. In spatially structured populations, the maintenance of polymorphism is further facilitated by dynamic mosaic structures, in which mutualistic partners form expanding and collapsing spatial bubbles or clusters. Additionally, we reveal strategy-diversity thresholds, both for well-mixed and spatially structured mutualistic communities, and discuss factors for meeting these thresholds, and thus maintaining mutualism. Our results demonstrate that interspecific mutualism, when considered as plastic investment behavior, can be unstable, and, in agreement with empirical observations, may involve a polymorphism of investment levels, varying both in space and in time. Identifying the mechanisms maintaining such polymorphism, and hence mutualism in natural communities, provides a significant step towards understanding the coevolution and population dynamics of mutualistic interactions.
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spelling pubmed-34992422012-11-19 Strategy Diversity Stabilizes Mutualism through Investment Cycles, Phase Polymorphism, and Spatial Bubbles Boza, Gergely Kun, Ádám Scheuring, István Dieckmann, Ulf PLoS Comput Biol Research Article There is continuing interest in understanding factors that facilitate the evolution and stability of cooperation within and between species. Such interactions will often involve plasticity in investment behavior, in response to the interacting partner's investments. Our aim here is to investigate the evolution and stability of reciprocal investment behavior in interspecific interactions, a key phenomenon strongly supported by experimental observations. In particular, we present a comprehensive analysis of a continuous reciprocal investment game between mutualists, both in well-mixed and spatially structured populations, and we demonstrate a series of novel mechanisms for maintaining interspecific mutualism. We demonstrate that mutualistic partners invariably follow investment cycles, during which mutualism first increases, before both partners eventually reduce their investments to zero, so that these cycles always conclude with full defection. We show that the key mechanism for stabilizing mutualism is phase polymorphism along the investment cycle. Although mutualistic partners perpetually change their strategies, the community-level distribution of investment levels becomes stationary. In spatially structured populations, the maintenance of polymorphism is further facilitated by dynamic mosaic structures, in which mutualistic partners form expanding and collapsing spatial bubbles or clusters. Additionally, we reveal strategy-diversity thresholds, both for well-mixed and spatially structured mutualistic communities, and discuss factors for meeting these thresholds, and thus maintaining mutualism. Our results demonstrate that interspecific mutualism, when considered as plastic investment behavior, can be unstable, and, in agreement with empirical observations, may involve a polymorphism of investment levels, varying both in space and in time. Identifying the mechanisms maintaining such polymorphism, and hence mutualism in natural communities, provides a significant step towards understanding the coevolution and population dynamics of mutualistic interactions. Public Library of Science 2012-11-15 /pmc/articles/PMC3499242/ /pubmed/23166478 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002660 Text en © 2012 Boza et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Boza, Gergely
Kun, Ádám
Scheuring, István
Dieckmann, Ulf
Strategy Diversity Stabilizes Mutualism through Investment Cycles, Phase Polymorphism, and Spatial Bubbles
title Strategy Diversity Stabilizes Mutualism through Investment Cycles, Phase Polymorphism, and Spatial Bubbles
title_full Strategy Diversity Stabilizes Mutualism through Investment Cycles, Phase Polymorphism, and Spatial Bubbles
title_fullStr Strategy Diversity Stabilizes Mutualism through Investment Cycles, Phase Polymorphism, and Spatial Bubbles
title_full_unstemmed Strategy Diversity Stabilizes Mutualism through Investment Cycles, Phase Polymorphism, and Spatial Bubbles
title_short Strategy Diversity Stabilizes Mutualism through Investment Cycles, Phase Polymorphism, and Spatial Bubbles
title_sort strategy diversity stabilizes mutualism through investment cycles, phase polymorphism, and spatial bubbles
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3499242/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23166478
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002660
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