ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2022
Evolution of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellularity.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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5 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- Host-initiated microbial association leads to stable ectosymbiosis in an ecological model.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- The embryo game uncovers hidden cell behaviours.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Cell size and selection for stress-induced cell fusion in unicellular eukaryotes.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Minor variations in multicellular life cycles have major effects on adaptation.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Evolution of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellularity.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
Multicellular organisms potentially show a large degree of diversity in reproductive strategies, producing offspring with varying sizes and compositions compared to their unicellular ancestors. In reality, only a few of these reproductive strategies are prevalent. To understand why this could be the case, we develop a stage-structured population model to probe the evolutionary growth advantages of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellular organisms. The performance of reproductive strategies is evaluated by the growth rates of the corresponding populations. We identify the optimal reproductive strategy, leading to the largest growth rate for a population. Considering the effects of organism size and cellular interaction, we found that distinct reproductive strategies could perform uniquely or equally well under different conditions. If a single reproductive strategy is optimal, it is binary splitting, dividing into two parts. Our results show that organism size and cellular interaction can play crucial roles in shaping reproductive strategies in nascent multicellularity. Our model sheds light on understanding the mechanism driving the evolution of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellularity. Beyond multicellularity, our results imply that a crucial factor in the evolution of unicellular species' reproductive strategies is organism size.
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