ArticleCurrent biology : CB2015
Fitness Trade-offs Result in the Illusion of Social Success.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Protist oxygen-sensing and the role of prolyl hydroxylase-regulation of E3(SCF) ubiquitin ligases.Biochimica et biophysica acta. General subjects · 2026Review
- Article
- Parallel evolution of the G protein-coupled receptor GrlG and the loss of fruiting body formation in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum evolved under low relatedness.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2023Article
- Reduced social function in experimentally evolvedProceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- The Genetics of Fitness Reorganization during the Transition to Multicellularity: The VolvocineGenes · 2023Review
- Developmental constraints enforce altruism and avert the tragedy of the commons in a social microbe.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- A personal cost of cheating can stabilize reproductive altruism during the early evolution of clonal multicellularity.Biology letters · 2022Article
- Mutant resources for functional genomics in Dictyostelium discoideum using REMI-seq technology.BMC biology · 2021Article
- Eco-evolutionary significance of "loners".PLoS biology · 2020Article
- WildEcology and evolution · 2020Article
- Conditional expression explains molecular evolution of social genes in a microbe.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Genetic Engineering of Dictyostelium discoideum Cells Based on Selection and Growth on Bacteria.Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE · 2019Article
- Cellular allorecognition and its roles in Dictyostelium development and social evolution.The International journal of developmental biology · 2019Review
- Strategic investment explains patterns of cooperation and cheating in a microbe.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Genetic signatures of microbial altruism and cheating in social amoebas in the wild.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- A single mutation inCommunications biology · 2018Article
- Rapid and efficient genetic engineering of both wild type and axenic strains of Dictyostelium discoideum.PloS one · 2018Article
- A polychromatic 'greenbeard' locus determines patterns of cooperation in a social amoeba.Nature communications · 2017Article
- Selection of Functional Quorum Sensing Systems by Lysogenic Bacteriophages inFrontiers in microbiology · 2017Article
- Lack of Ecological and Life History Context Can Create the Illusion of Social Interactions in Dictyostelium discoideum.PLoS computational biology · 2016Article
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Abstract
Cooperation is ubiquitous across the tree of life, from simple microbes to the complex social systems of animals. Individuals cooperate by engaging in costly behaviors that can be exploited by other individuals who benefit by avoiding these associated costs. Thus, if successful exploitation of social partners during cooperative interactions increases relative fitness, then we expect selection to lead to the emergence of a single optimal winning strategy in which individuals maximize their gain from cooperation while minimizing their associated costs. Such social "cheating" appears to be widespread in nature, including in several microbial systems, but despite the fitness advantages favoring social cheating, populations tend to harbor significant variation in social success rather than a single optimal winning strategy. Using the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, we provide a possible explanation for the coexistence of such variation. We find that genotypes typically designated as "cheaters" because they produce a disproportionate number of spores in chimeric fruiting bodies do not actually gain higher fitness as a result of this apparent advantage because they produce smaller, less viable spores than putative "losers." As a consequence of this trade-off between spore number and viability, genotypes with different spore production strategies, which give the appearance of differential social success, ultimately have similar realized fitness. These findings highlight the limitations of using single fitness proxies in evolutionary studies and suggest that interpreting social trait variation in terms of strategies like cheating or cooperating may be misleading unless these behaviors are considered in the context of the true multidimensional nature of fitness.
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