ArticleNature2014
Life cycles, fitness decoupling and the evolution of multicellularity.
Article in Nature, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 88 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
88 citing papers in PubMed.
- Review
- Direct benefits are not necessary for the evolution of multicellularity.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- DNA methylation in invertebrate genomes and cell lineage plasticity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Article
- Two kinds of evolutionary individuals: the concept of common interest as an evolutionary foundation of dualism on biological individuality.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2026Article
- Top-Down Coercive Mechanisms and the Major Transitions in Evolution.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2025Review
- Evolutionary dynamics of nascent multicellular lineages.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Evolution of irreversible differentiation under stage-dependent cell differentiation.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Presence of a biofilm beneficiary alters the evolutionary trajectory of a biofilm former.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Individuality Through Ecology: Rethinking the Evolution of Complex Life From an Externalist Perspective.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Stability of ecologically scaffolded traits during evolutionary transitions in individuality.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Group-selection via aggregative propagule-formation enables cooperative multicellularity in an individual based, spatial model.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Polar accumulation of pyoverdin and exit from stationary phase.microLife · 2024Article
- Multispecies interactions shape the transition to multicellularity.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Review
- Bacteria evolve macroscopic multicellularity by the genetic assimilation of phenotypically plastic cell clustering.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Alternating selection for dispersal and multicellularity favors regulated life cycles.Current biology : CB · 2023Article
- Distribution of mutation rates challenges evolutionary predictability.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
- The role of the ecological scaffold in the origin and maintenance of whole-group trait altruism in microbial populations.BMC ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Major evolutionary transitions in individuality between humans and AI.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
28 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cooperation is central to the emergence of multicellular life; however, the means by which the earliest collectives (groups of cells) maintained integrity in the face of destructive cheating types is unclear. One idea posits cheats as a primitive germ line in a life cycle that facilitates collective reproduction. Here we describe an experiment in which simple cooperating lineages of bacteria were propagated under a selective regime that rewarded collective-level persistence. Collectives reproduced via life cycles that either embraced, or purged, cheating types. When embraced, the life cycle alternated between phenotypic states. Selection fostered inception of a developmental switch that underpinned the emergence of collectives whose fitness, during the course of evolution, became decoupled from the fitness of constituent cells. Such development and decoupling did not occur when groups reproduced via a cheat-purging regime. Our findings capture key events in the evolution of Darwinian individuality during the transition from single cells to multicellularity.
Indexed as
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25373677What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.