Conflict and conflict resolution in the major transitions

Bourke, Andrew F. G.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2023.1420

Cited by 6 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Looked at another way, the Paradox asks why the major transitions in individuality do not seem to go in reverse. Organisms are collectives made of parts (e.g., genes, genomes, and cells) that had had their own purposes earlier in evolutionary history but that can now function only as part of higher levels of individuality (West et al, 2015;Bourrat et al, 2022;Bourke, 2023;Doulcier et al, 2023). These 'collective agents' clearly harbor internal conflicts over the direction of the organism, but why do they not get out of hand?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying internal conflicts and their threats to organismal form and fitness

Schenkel,

Patten,

Ågren

2024

Preprint

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Evolutionary biologists often treat organisms as both fitness-maximizing agents and as the primary level at which adaptation manifests. Yet, genes and cells may also seek to optimize their fitness by distorting the Mendelian rules of transmission or by influencing organismal traits for their own benefit. Organismal form and fitness are therefore threatened from within by selfish genes and cells. However, to what extent such internal conflicts actually harm individual organisms and threaten our concept of the organism as the sole bearer of adaptation remains unclear. We introduce a mathematical framework to capture the threat posed by internal conflicts and develop two metrics to measure their various forms of harm. We name these metrics fitness unity and trait unity, and use them to refer to the threats posed by internal conflicts to an organism's role as the optimizing agent and the strategy wielded to achieve that optimization, respectively. We apply our framework to two examples of internal conflicts, genomic imprinting and sex ratio distortion, to illustrate how such harms from internal conflict may be quantified. We conclude by discussing the conditions under which internal conflict becomes sufficiently disruptive to organisms that it no longer makes sense to think of them as unified fitness-maximizing agents, but instead as adaptive compromises of multiple competing sub-agents.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying internal conflicts and their threats to organismal form and fitness

Schenkel,

Patten,

Ågren

2024

Preprint

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“…Conflict within a multicellular organism occurs when the inclusive fitness interests of the constituent cells are misaligned [ 6 ]—the cells are not all working towards the same goal. The mode of group formation demonstrates how such conflict can limit complexity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflict-reducing innovations in development enable increased multicellular complexity

Howe,

Cornwallis,

Griffin

2024

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Obligately multicellular organisms, where cells can only reproduce as part of the group, have evolved multiple times across the tree of life. Obligate multicellularity has only evolved when clonal groups form by cell division, rather than by cells aggregating, as clonality prevents internal conflict. Yet obligately multicellular organisms still vary greatly in ‘multicellular complexity’ (the number of cells and cell types): some comprise a few cells and cell types, while others have billions of cells and thousands of types. Here, we test whether variation in multicellular complexity is explained by two conflict-suppressing mechanisms, namely a single-cell bottleneck at the start of development, and a strict separation of germline and somatic cells. Examining the life cycles of 129 lineages of plants, animals, fungi and algae, we show using phylogenetic comparative analyses that an early segregation of the germline stem-cell lineage is key to the evolution of more cell types, driven by a strong correlation in the Metazoa. By contrast, the presence of a strict single-cell bottleneck was not related to either the number of cells or the number of cell types, but was associated with early germline segregation. Our results suggest that segregating the germline earlier in development enabled greater evolutionary innovation, although whether this is a consequence of conflict reduction or other non-conflict effects, such as developmental flexibility, is unclear.

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“…These shifts from one level of sociality to another are termed major evolutionary transitions (e.g. as seen in red algae or mound-building termites) [1].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the most striking and essential features about living organisms is their astonishing array of social interactions. Chromosomes cooperate with other chromosomes within cells; cells associate with other cells to form multicellular organisms; and individual insects live with other, related insects to form cohesive colonies [1][2][3][4][5]. The variety and depth of these cooperations can be thought of as social complexity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The diversity of social complexity in termites

Revely,

Eggleton,

Clement

et al. 2024

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Sociality underpins major evolutionary transitions and significantly influences the structure and function of complex ecosystems. Social insects, seen as the pinnacle of sociality, have traits like obligate sterility that are considered ‘master traits’, used as single phenotypic measures of this complexity. However, evidence is mounting that completely aligning both phenotypic and evolutionary social complexity, and having obligate sterility central to both, is erroneous. We hypothesize that obligate and functional sterility are insufficient in explaining the diversity of phenotypic social complexity in social insects. To test this, we explore the relative importance of these sterility traits in an understudied but diverse taxon: the termites. We compile the largest termite social complexity dataset to date, using specimen and literature data. We find that although functional and obligate sterility explain a significant proportion of variance, neither trait is an adequate singular proxy for the phenotypic social complexity of termites. Further, we show both traits have only a weak association with the other social complexity traits within termites. These findings have ramifications for our general comprehension of the frameworks of phenotypic and evolutionary social complexity, and their relationship with sterility.

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Conflict and conflict resolution in the major transitions

Cited by 6 publications

References 76 publications

Quantifying internal conflicts and their threats to organismal form and fitness

Quantifying internal conflicts and their threats to organismal form and fitness

Conflict-reducing innovations in development enable increased multicellular complexity

The diversity of social complexity in termites

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