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Resource heterogeneity and the evolution of public-goods cooperation

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Stilwell_2020_EL_Resource_CC.pdf (489.3Kb)
Date
04/02/2020
Author
Stilwell, Peter
O'Brien, Siobhan
Hesse, Elze
Lowe, Chris
Gardner, Andy
Buckling, Angus
Keywords
Resource heterogeneity
Cooperation
Siderophores
Evolution
Microorganisms
Models
QH301 Biology
DAS
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Abstract
Heterogeneity in resources is a ubiquitous feature of natural landscapes affecting many aspects of biology. However, the effect of environmental heterogeneity on the evolution of cooperation has been less well studied. Here, using a mixture of theory and experiments measuring siderophore production by the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa as a model for public goods based cooperation, we explore the effect of heterogeneity in resource availability. We show that cooperation in metapopulations that were spatially heterogeneous in terms of resources can be maintained at a higher level than in homogeneous metapopulations of the same average resource value. The results can be explained by a positive covariance between fitness of cooperators, population size, and local resource availability, which allowed cooperators to have a disproportionate advantage within the heterogeneous metapopulations. These results suggest that natural environmental variation may help to maintain cooperation.
Citation
Stilwell , P , O'Brien , S , Hesse , E , Lowe , C , Gardner , A & Buckling , A 2020 , ' Resource heterogeneity and the evolution of public-goods cooperation ' , Evolution Letters , vol. Early View . https://doi.org/10.1002/evl3.158
Publication
Evolution Letters
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/evl3.158
ISSN
2056-3744
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Evolution Letters published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) and European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
Authors thank NERC, BBSRC, AXA research fund, Royal Society (AB & AG) and ERC 370 (AG) for funding.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/19421

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