Cargando…
Adaptation to public goods cheats in Pseudomonas aeruginosa
Cooperation in nature is ubiquitous, but is susceptible to social cheats who pay little or no cost of cooperation yet reap the benefits. The effect such cheats have on reducing population productivity suggests that there is selection for cooperators to mitigate the adverse effects of cheats. While m...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2017
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5543229/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28747481 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.1089 |
_version_ | 1783255114039951360 |
---|---|
author | O'Brien, Siobhán Luján, Adela M. Paterson, Steve Cant, Michael A. Buckling, Angus |
author_facet | O'Brien, Siobhán Luján, Adela M. Paterson, Steve Cant, Michael A. Buckling, Angus |
author_sort | O'Brien, Siobhán |
collection | PubMed |
description | Cooperation in nature is ubiquitous, but is susceptible to social cheats who pay little or no cost of cooperation yet reap the benefits. The effect such cheats have on reducing population productivity suggests that there is selection for cooperators to mitigate the adverse effects of cheats. While mechanisms have been elucidated for scenarios involving a direct association between producer and cooperative product, it is less clear how cooperators may suppress cheating in an anonymous public goods scenario, where cheats cannot be directly identified. Here, we investigate the real-time evolutionary response of cooperators to cheats when cooperation is mediated by a diffusible public good: the production of iron-scavenging siderophores by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. We find that siderophore producers evolved in the presence of a high frequency of non-producing cheats were fitter in the presence of cheats, at no obvious cost to population productivity. A novel morphotype independently evolved and reached higher frequencies in cheat-adapted versus control populations, exhibiting reduced siderophore production but increased production of pyocyanin—an extracellular toxin that can also increase the availability of soluble iron. This suggests that cooperators may have mitigated the negative effects of cheats by downregulating siderophore production and upregulating an alternative iron-acquisition public good. More generally, the study emphasizes that cooperating organisms can rapidly adapt to the presence of anonymous cheats without necessarily incurring fitness costs in the environment they evolve in. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5543229 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-55432292017-08-08 Adaptation to public goods cheats in Pseudomonas aeruginosa O'Brien, Siobhán Luján, Adela M. Paterson, Steve Cant, Michael A. Buckling, Angus Proc Biol Sci Evolution Cooperation in nature is ubiquitous, but is susceptible to social cheats who pay little or no cost of cooperation yet reap the benefits. The effect such cheats have on reducing population productivity suggests that there is selection for cooperators to mitigate the adverse effects of cheats. While mechanisms have been elucidated for scenarios involving a direct association between producer and cooperative product, it is less clear how cooperators may suppress cheating in an anonymous public goods scenario, where cheats cannot be directly identified. Here, we investigate the real-time evolutionary response of cooperators to cheats when cooperation is mediated by a diffusible public good: the production of iron-scavenging siderophores by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. We find that siderophore producers evolved in the presence of a high frequency of non-producing cheats were fitter in the presence of cheats, at no obvious cost to population productivity. A novel morphotype independently evolved and reached higher frequencies in cheat-adapted versus control populations, exhibiting reduced siderophore production but increased production of pyocyanin—an extracellular toxin that can also increase the availability of soluble iron. This suggests that cooperators may have mitigated the negative effects of cheats by downregulating siderophore production and upregulating an alternative iron-acquisition public good. More generally, the study emphasizes that cooperating organisms can rapidly adapt to the presence of anonymous cheats without necessarily incurring fitness costs in the environment they evolve in. The Royal Society 2017-07-26 2017-07-26 /pmc/articles/PMC5543229/ /pubmed/28747481 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.1089 Text en © 2017 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Evolution O'Brien, Siobhán Luján, Adela M. Paterson, Steve Cant, Michael A. Buckling, Angus Adaptation to public goods cheats in Pseudomonas aeruginosa |
title | Adaptation to public goods cheats in Pseudomonas aeruginosa |
title_full | Adaptation to public goods cheats in Pseudomonas aeruginosa |
title_fullStr | Adaptation to public goods cheats in Pseudomonas aeruginosa |
title_full_unstemmed | Adaptation to public goods cheats in Pseudomonas aeruginosa |
title_short | Adaptation to public goods cheats in Pseudomonas aeruginosa |
title_sort | adaptation to public goods cheats in pseudomonas aeruginosa |
topic | Evolution |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5543229/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28747481 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.1089 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT obriensiobhan adaptationtopublicgoodscheatsinpseudomonasaeruginosa AT lujanadelam adaptationtopublicgoodscheatsinpseudomonasaeruginosa AT patersonsteve adaptationtopublicgoodscheatsinpseudomonasaeruginosa AT cantmichaela adaptationtopublicgoodscheatsinpseudomonasaeruginosa AT bucklingangus adaptationtopublicgoodscheatsinpseudomonasaeruginosa |