56,005 research outputs found
Spatial heterogeneity promotes coexistence of rock-paper-scissor metacommunities
The rock-paper-scissor game -- which is characterized by three strategies
R,P,S, satisfying the non-transitive relations S excludes P, P excludes R, and
R excludes S -- serves as a simple prototype for studying more complex
non-transitive systems. For well-mixed systems where interactions result in
fitness reductions of the losers exceeding fitness gains of the winners,
classical theory predicts that two strategies go extinct. The effects of
spatial heterogeneity and dispersal rates on this outcome are analyzed using a
general framework for evolutionary games in patchy landscapes. The analysis
reveals that coexistence is determined by the rates at which dominant
strategies invade a landscape occupied by the subordinate strategy (e.g. rock
invades a landscape occupied by scissors) and the rates at which subordinate
strategies get excluded in a landscape occupied by the dominant strategy (e.g.
scissor gets excluded in a landscape occupied by rock). These invasion and
exclusion rates correspond to eigenvalues of the linearized dynamics near
single strategy equilibria. Coexistence occurs when the product of the invasion
rates exceeds the product of the exclusion rates. Provided there is sufficient
spatial variation in payoffs, the analysis identifies a critical dispersal rate
required for regional persistence. For dispersal rates below , the
product of the invasion rates exceed the product of the exclusion rates and the
rock-paper-scissor metacommunities persist regionally despite being extinction
prone locally. For dispersal rates above , the product of the exclusion
rates exceed the product of the invasion rates and the strategies are
extinction prone. These results highlight the delicate interplay between
spatial heterogeneity and dispersal in mediating long-term outcomes for
evolutionary games.Comment: 31pages, 5 figure
Genome-driven evolutionary game theory helps understand the rise of metabolic interdependencies in microbial communities
Metabolite exchanges in microbial communities give rise to ecological interactions that govern ecosystem diversity and stability. It is unclear, however, how the rise of these interactions varies across metabolites and organisms. Here we address this question by integrating genome-scale models of metabolism with evolutionary game theory. Specifically, we use microbial fitness values estimated by metabolic models to infer evolutionarily stable interactions in multi-species microbial “games”. We first validate our approach using a well-characterized yeast cheater-cooperator system. We next perform over 80,000 in silico experiments to infer how metabolic interdependencies mediated by amino acid leakage in Escherichia coli vary across 189 amino acid pairs. While most pairs display shared patterns of inter-species interactions, multiple deviations are caused by pleiotropy and epistasis in metabolism. Furthermore, simulated invasion experiments reveal possible paths to obligate cross-feeding. Our study provides genomically driven insight into the rise of ecological interactions, with implications for microbiome research and synthetic ecology.We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Purchase Request No. HR0011515303, Contract No. HR0011-15-C-0091), the U.S. Department of Energy (Grants DE-SC0004962 and DE-SC0012627), the NIH (Grants 5R01DE024468 and R01GM121950), the national Science Foundation (Grants 1457695 and NSFOCE-BSF 1635070), MURI Grant W911NF-12-1-0390, the Human Frontiers Science Program (grant RGP0020/2016), and the Boston University Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Office ARC grant on Systems Biology Approaches to Microbiome Research. We also thank Dr Kirill Korolev and members of the Segre Lab for their invaluable feedback on this work. (HR0011515303 - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; HR0011-15-C-0091 - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; DE-SC0004962 - U.S. Department of Energy; DE-SC0012627 - U.S. Department of Energy; 5R01DE024468 - NIH; R01GM121950 - NIH; 1457695 - national Science Foundation; NSFOCE-BSF 1635070 - national Science Foundation; W911NF-12-1-0390 - MURI; RGP0020/2016 - Human Frontiers Science Program; Boston University Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Office ARC)Published versio
Evolutionary prisoner's dilemma game with dynamic preferential selection
We study a modified prisoner's dilemma game taking place on two-dimensional
disordered square lattices. The players are pure strategists and can either
cooperate or defect with their immediate neighbors. In the generations each
player update its strategy by following one of the neighboring strategies with
a probability dependent on the payoff difference. The neighbor selection obeys
a dynamic preferential rule, i.e., the more frequently a neighbor's strategy
was adopted by the focal player in the previous rounds, the larger probability
it will be chosen to refer to in the subsequent rounds. It is found that
cooperation is substantially promoted due to this simple selection mechanism.
Corresponding analysis is provided by the investigations of the distribution of
players' impact weights, persistence, and as well as correlation function.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure
The evolutionary ecology of interactive synchronism: The illusion of the optimal phenotype
In this article, we discuss some ecological-evolutionary strategies that allow synchronization of organisms, resources, and conditions. Survival and reproduction require synchronization of life cycles of organisms with favourable environmental and ecological features and conditions. This interactive synchronization can occur directly, through pairwise or diffuse co-evolution, or indirectly, for example, as a result of actions of ecosystem engineers and facilitator species. Observations of specific interactions, especially those which have coevolved, may give the false impression that evolution results in optimal genotypes or phenotypes. However, some phenotypes may arise under evolutionary constraints, such as simultaneous evolution of multiple traits, lack of a chain of fit transitional forms leading to an optimal phenotype, or by limits inherent in the process of selection, set by the number of selective deaths and by interference between linked variants. Although there are no optimal phenotypes, optimization models applied to particular species may be useful for a better understanding of the nature of adaptations. The evolution of adaptive strategies results in variable life histories. These strategies can minimize adverse impacts on the fitness of extreme or severe environmental conditions on survival and reproduction, and may include reproductive strategies such as semelparity and iteroparity, or morphological, physiological, or behavioural traits such as diapause, seasonal polyphenism, migration, or bet-hedging. However, natural selection cannot indefinitely maintain intra-population variation, and lack of variation can ultimately extinguish populations
Consequences of fluctuating group size for the evolution of cooperation
Studies of cooperation have traditionally focused on discrete games such as
the well-known prisoner's dilemma, in which players choose between two pure
strategies: cooperation and defection. Increasingly, however, cooperation is
being studied in continuous games that feature a continuum of strategies
determining the level of cooperative investment. For the continuous snowdrift
game, it has been shown that a gradually evolving monomorphic population may
undergo evolutionary branching, resulting in the emergence of a defector
strategy that coexists with a cooperator strategy. This phenomenon has been
dubbed the 'tragedy of the commune'. Here we study the effects of fluctuating
group size on the tragedy of the commune and derive analytical conditions for
evolutionary branching. Our results show that the effects of fluctuating group
size on evolutionary dynamics critically depend on the structure of payoff
functions. For games with additively separable benefits and costs, fluctuations
in group size make evolutionary branching less likely, and sufficiently large
fluctuations in group size can always turn an evolutionary branching point into
a locally evolutionarily stable strategy. For games with multiplicatively
separable benefits and costs, fluctuations in group size can either prevent or
induce the tragedy of the commune. For games with general interactions between
benefits and costs, we derive a general classification scheme based on second
derivatives of the payoff function, to elucidate when fluctuations in group
size help or hinder cooperation.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figure
Evolutionary Multiplayer Games
Evolutionary game theory has become one of the most diverse and far reaching
theories in biology. Applications of this theory range from cell dynamics to
social evolution. However, many applications make it clear that inherent
non-linearities of natural systems need to be taken into account. One way of
introducing such non-linearities into evolutionary games is by the inclusion of
multiple players. An example is of social dilemmas, where group benefits could
e.g.\ increase less than linear with the number of cooperators. Such
multiplayer games can be introduced in all the fields where evolutionary game
theory is already well established. However, the inclusion of non-linearities
can help to advance the analysis of systems which are known to be complex, e.g.
in the case of non-Mendelian inheritance. We review the diachronic theory and
applications of multiplayer evolutionary games and present the current state of
the field. Our aim is a summary of the theoretical results from well-mixed
populations in infinite as well as finite populations. We also discuss examples
from three fields where the theory has been successfully applied, ecology,
social sciences and population genetics. In closing, we probe certain future
directions which can be explored using the complexity of multiplayer games
while preserving the promise of simplicity of evolutionary games.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, review pape
Bio-Communication of Bacteria and its Evolutionary Interrelations to Natural Genome Editing Competences of Viruses
Communicative competences enable bacteria to develop, organise and coordinate rich social life with a great variety of behavioral patterns even in which they organise themselves like multicellular organisms. They have existed for almost four billion years and still survive, being part of the most dramatic changes in evolutionary history such as DNA invention, cellular life, invention of nearly all protein types, partial constitution of eukaryotic cells, vertical colonisation of all eukaryotes, high adaptability through horizontal gene transfer and co-operative multispecies colonisation of all ecological niches. Recent research demonstrates that these bacterial competences derive from the aptitude of viruses for natural genome editing. 
	In contrast to a book which would be the appropriate space to outline in depth all communicative pathways inherent in bacterial life in this current article I want to give an overview for a broader readership over the great variety of bacterial bio-communication: In a first step I describe how they interpret and coordinate, what semiochemical vocabulary they share and which goals they try to reach. In a second stage I describe the main categories of sign-mediated interactions between bacterial and non-bacterial organisms, and between bacteria of the same or related species. In a third stage I will focus on the relationship between bacteria and their obligate settlers, i.e. viruses. We will see that bacteria are important hosts for multiviral colonisation and virally-determined order of nucleic acid sequences.


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