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An experimental study of strong reciprocity in bacteria
Strong reciprocity, whereby cooperators punish non-cooperators, may help to explain the evolutionary success of cooperative behaviours. However, theory suggests that selection for strong reciprocity can depend upon tight genetic linkage between cooperation and punishment, to avoid the strategy being...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3949375/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24501270 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2013.1069 |
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author | Inglis, R. Fredrik West, Stuart Buckling, Angus |
author_facet | Inglis, R. Fredrik West, Stuart Buckling, Angus |
author_sort | Inglis, R. Fredrik |
collection | PubMed |
description | Strong reciprocity, whereby cooperators punish non-cooperators, may help to explain the evolutionary success of cooperative behaviours. However, theory suggests that selection for strong reciprocity can depend upon tight genetic linkage between cooperation and punishment, to avoid the strategy being outcompeted by non-punishing cooperators. We tested this hypothesis using experimental populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which cooperate by producing iron-scavenging siderophores and, in this context, punish non-cooperators with toxins. Consistent with theory, we show that cooperative punishers can indeed invade cheats, but only when the traits are tightly linked. These results emphasize that punishment is only likely to be favoured when the punishment itself leads to a direct or indirect fitness benefit to the actor. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3949375 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-39493752014-03-13 An experimental study of strong reciprocity in bacteria Inglis, R. Fredrik West, Stuart Buckling, Angus Biol Lett Evolutionary Biology Strong reciprocity, whereby cooperators punish non-cooperators, may help to explain the evolutionary success of cooperative behaviours. However, theory suggests that selection for strong reciprocity can depend upon tight genetic linkage between cooperation and punishment, to avoid the strategy being outcompeted by non-punishing cooperators. We tested this hypothesis using experimental populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which cooperate by producing iron-scavenging siderophores and, in this context, punish non-cooperators with toxins. Consistent with theory, we show that cooperative punishers can indeed invade cheats, but only when the traits are tightly linked. These results emphasize that punishment is only likely to be favoured when the punishment itself leads to a direct or indirect fitness benefit to the actor. The Royal Society 2014-02 /pmc/articles/PMC3949375/ /pubmed/24501270 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2013.1069 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ © 2014 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Evolutionary Biology Inglis, R. Fredrik West, Stuart Buckling, Angus An experimental study of strong reciprocity in bacteria |
title | An experimental study of strong reciprocity in bacteria |
title_full | An experimental study of strong reciprocity in bacteria |
title_fullStr | An experimental study of strong reciprocity in bacteria |
title_full_unstemmed | An experimental study of strong reciprocity in bacteria |
title_short | An experimental study of strong reciprocity in bacteria |
title_sort | experimental study of strong reciprocity in bacteria |
topic | Evolutionary Biology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3949375/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24501270 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2013.1069 |
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