ArticleeLife2020
Topological constraints in early multicellularity favor reproductive division of labor.
Article in eLife, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Individuality Through Ecology: Rethinking the Evolution of Complex Life From an Externalist Perspective.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Adaptive advantages of restorative RNA editing in fungi for resolving survival-reproduction trade-offs.Science advances · 2024Article
- Metabolic FRET sensors in intact organs: Applying spectral unmixing to acquire reliable signals.Biology open · 2023Article
- Antibiotic resistance in bacterial communities.Current opinion in microbiology · 2023Review
- Tissues as networks of cells: towards generative rules of complex organ development.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Review
- De novo evolution of macroscopic multicellularity.Nature · 2023Article
- A game-based approach for designing a collaborative evolution mechanism for unmanned swarms on community networks.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Varied solutions to multicellularity: The biophysical and evolutionary consequences of diverse intercellular bonds.Biophysics reviews · 2022Review
- Ecological drivers of division of labour in Streptomyces.Current opinion in microbiology · 2022Review
- Enforced specialization fosters mutual cheating and not division of labour in the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2022Article
- Evolution of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellularity.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Cellular organization in lab-evolved and extant multicellular species obeys a maximum entropy law.eLife · 2022Article
- Losing out to improve group fitness.eLife · 2021Article
- Relatedness and the evolution of mechanisms to divide labor in microorganisms.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
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6 authors.
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Abstract
Reproductive division of labor (e.g. germ-soma specialization) is a hallmark of the evolution of multicellularity, signifying the emergence of a new type of individual and facilitating the evolution of increased organismal complexity. A large body of work from evolutionary biology, economics, and ecology has shown that specialization is beneficial when further division of labor produces an accelerating increase in absolute productivity (i.e. productivity is a convex function of specialization). Here we show that reproductive specialization is qualitatively different from classical models of resource sharing, and can evolve even when the benefits of specialization are saturating (i.e. productivity is a concave function of specialization). Through analytical theory and evolutionary individual-based simulations, we demonstrate that reproductive specialization is strongly favored in sparse networks of cellular interactions that reflect the morphology of early, simple multicellular organisms, highlighting the importance of restricted social interactions in the evolution of reproductive specialization.
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