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Microbes require several complex organic molecules for growth. A species may obtain a required factor by taking up molecules released by other species or by synthesizing the molecule. The patterns of uptake and synthesis set a flow of…
The relationship between the dynamics of a community and its constituent pairwise interactions is a fundamental problem in ecology. Higher-order ecological effects beyond pairwise interactions may be key to complex ecosystems, but…
The role of the selection pressure and mutation amplitude on the behavior of a single-species population evolving on a two-dimensional lattice, in a periodically changing environment, is studied both analytically and numerically. The…
Cooperation is beneficial for the species as a whole, but, at the level of an individual, defection pays off. Natural selection is then expected to favor defectors and eliminate cooperation. This prediction is in stark contrast with the…
Ecology and evolution are inherently linked, and studying a mathematical model that considers both holds promise of insightful discoveries related to the dynamics of cooperation. In the present article, we use the prisoner's dilemma (PD)…
We study the evolution of cooperation under the assumption that the collective benefits of group membership can only be harvested if the fraction of cooperators within the group, i.e. their critical mass, exceeds a threshold value.…
The functioning of animal as well as human societies fundamentally relies on cooperation. Yet, defection is often favorable for the selfish individual, and social dilemmas arise. Selection by individuals' fitness, usually the basic driving…
Microorganisms live in environments that inevitably fluctuate between mild and harsh conditions. As harsh conditions may cause extinctions, the rate at which fluctuations occur can shape microbial communities and their diversity, but we…
Microbial ecosystems are remarkably diverse, stable, and often consist of a balanced mixture of core and peripheral species. Here we propose a conceptual model exhibiting all these emergent properties in quantitative agreement with real…
Human society and natural environment form a complex giant ecosystem, where human activities not only lead to the change of environmental states, but also react to them. By using collective-risk social dilemma game, some studies have…
In times of plenty expectations rise, just as in times of crisis they fall. This can be mathematically described as a Win-Stay-Lose-Shift strategy with dynamic aspiration levels, where individuals aspire to be as wealthy as their average…
Mixed microbial communities, usually composed of various bacterial and fungal species, are fundamental in a plethora of environments, from soil to human gut and skin. Their evolution is a paradigmatic example of intertwined dynamics, where…
The paradox of cooperation among selfish individuals still puzzles scientific communities. Although a large amount of evidence has demonstrated that cooperator clusters in spatial games are effective to protect cooperators against the…
Cooperators benefit others with paying costs. Evolution of cooperation crucially depends on the cost-benefit ratio of cooperation, denoted as $c$. In this work, we investigate the infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma for various values of…
In drylands, water availability determines plant population densities and whether they cooperate via facilitation or compete. When water scarcity intensifies, plant densities decrease and competition for water surpasses the benefits of soil…
The exchange of diffusive metabolites is known to control the spatial patterns formed by microbial populations, as revealed by recent studies in the laboratory. However, the matrices used, such as agarose pads, lack the structured geometry…
Social structure affects the emergence and maintenance of cooperation. Here we study the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation in fragmented societies, and show that conjoining segregated cooperation-inhibiting groups, if done properly,…
A fundamental goal of microbial ecology is to understand what determines the diversity, stability, and structure of microbial ecosystems. The microbial context poses special conceptual challenges because of the strong mutual influences…
Standard game theory cannot describe microbial interactions mediated by diffusible molecules. Nevertheless, we show that one can still model microbial dynamics using game theory with parameters renormalized by diffusion. Contrary to…
Recent experimental results with humans involved in social dilemma games suggest that cooperation may be a contagious phenomenon and that the selection pressure operating on evolutionary dynamics (i.e., mimicry) is relatively weak. I…