Evolution of restraint in a structured rock–paper–scissors community

Nahum, Joshua R.; Harding, Brittany N.; Kerr, Benjamin

doi:10.1073/pnas.1100296108

Cited by 107 publications

(119 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…The evolution of restrained growth phenotypes was shown earlier in systems that combined limited dispersal and/or spatial structure with ecological feedback. Examples include experiments with a community of three competitors that are engaged in a nontransitive (rock-paper-scissors) relationship (27) or the evolution of bacterial cross-feeding, which is costly for the individual but benefits the community (28). Compared with those studies, we show that the evolution of restraint is also possible without ecological feedback if the selection regime directly aims at an increased number of offspring.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 79%

Availability of public goods shapes the evolution of competing metabolic strategies

Bachmann¹,

Fischlechner

Rabbers³

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

176

220

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Tradeoffs provide a rationale for the outcome of natural selection. A prominent example is the negative correlation between the growth rate and the biomass yield in unicellular organisms. This tradeoff leads to a dilemma, where the optimization of growth rate is advantageous for an individual, whereas the optimization of the biomass yield would be advantageous for a population. High-rate strategies are observed in a broad variety of organisms such as Escherichia coli, yeast, and cancer cells. Growth in suspension cultures favors fast-growing organisms, whereas spatial structure is of importance for the evolution of high-yield strategies. Despite this realization, experimental methods to directly select for increased yield are lacking. We here show that the serial propagation of a microbial population in a water-in-oil emulsion allows selection of strains with increased biomass yield. The propagation in emulsion creates a spatially structured environment where the growth-limiting substrate is privatized for populations founded by individual cells. Experimental evolution of several isogenic Lactococcus lactis strains demonstrated the existence of a tradeoff between growth rate and biomass yield as an apparent Pareto front. The underlying mutations altered glucose transport and led to major shifts between homofermentative and heterofermentative metabolism, accounting for the changes in metabolic efficiency. The results demonstrated the impact of privatizing a public good on the evolutionary outcome between competing metabolic strategies. The presented approach allows the investigation of fundamental questions in biology such as the evolution of cooperation, cell-cell interactions, and the relationships between environmental and metabolic constraints.A lthough the existence of tradeoffs in evolution seems to be undisputable, experimental evidence obtained under controlled conditions is scarce. Several examples failed to show tradeoffs (1-4), whereas others could find them (5, 6) or found general but not universal tradeoffs (7,8). A tradeoff between growth rate and growth yield in microbes (9-11) has direct implications for experiments carried out in liquid cultures. This is especially of importance during prolonged cultivations such as laboratory evolution experiments. In suspension, fast-growing variants outcompete slower growing ones at the cost of biomass yield (5). The yield versus rate optimization is governed by a dilemma where fast growth is advantageous from the perspective of an individual cell, whereas slow growth, and therefore high yield, is advantageous from the perspective of a population. This dilemma is consistent with a concept termed the tragedy of the commons (12). It is well described that spatial structure is essential for the selection of high-yield strategies (13-15). The yield/rate tradeoff of microbial growth has been linked to metabolic strategies (11) such as the switch between respiration and fermentation in yeast (9). It is suggested that the underlying cause of this tradeoff is based on...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 79%

Availability of public goods shapes the evolution of competing metabolic strategies

Bachmann¹,

Fischlechner

Rabbers³

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

176

220

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Patterns resulting from cyclic dominance are common in nature, ranging from bacteria [29,30,32] to plants [64,65] to the scale of ecological systems [26,27]. Several previous works have illustrated that invasion rates between competing species can influence the resulting morphology [66].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ample attention to the theoretical aspects of cyclical interactions is fueled by actual observations of such interactions in nature. Prominent examples include the mating strategy of side-blotched lizards [26], overgrowth of marine sessile organisms [27], genetic regulation in the repressilator [28], and competition in microbial populations [29][30][31][32].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From pairwise to group interactions in games of cyclic dominance

2014

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We study the rock-paper-scissors game in structured populations, where the invasion rates determine individual payoffs that govern the process of strategy change. The traditional version of the game is recovered if the payoffs for each potential invasion stem from a single pairwise interaction. However, the transformation of invasion rates to payoffs also allows the usage of larger interaction ranges. In addition to the traditional pairwise interaction, we therefore consider simultaneous interactions with all nearest neighbors, as well as with all nearest and next-nearest neighbors, thus effectively going from single pair to group interactions in games of cyclic dominance. We show that differences in the interaction range affect not only the stationary fractions of strategies but also their relations of dominance. The transition from pairwise to group interactions can thus decelerate and even revert the direction of the invasion between the competing strategies. Like in evolutionary social dilemmas, in games of cyclic dominance, too, the indirect multipoint interactions that are due to group interactions hence play a pivotal role. Our results indicate that, in addition to the invasion rates, the interaction range is at least as important for the maintenance of biodiversity among cyclically competing strategies.

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“…If it were holding back, this would be a social trait that would benefit others and thus, would be expected to evolve under kin selection only if the genes for that trait are also present in others (and they benefit accordingly). In an experiment, Nahum et al (27) look at the evolution of restraint in a nontransitive hierarchy often described by the rock-paper-scissors game in which no one type consistently dominates. They used Escherichia coli clones and the colicin system (28).…”

Section: Box 1 In the Light Of Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%