Related papers: Evolution of specialized microbial cooperation in …
Bacteria populations rely on mechanisms such as quorum sensing to coordinate complex tasks that cannot be achieved by a single bacterium. Quorum sensing is used to measure the local bacteria population density, and it controls cooperation…
Social dilemmas are an integral part of social interactions. Cooperative actions, ranging from secreting extra-cellular products in microbial populations to donating blood in humans, are costly to the actor and hence create an incentive to…
In natural environments, solid surfaces present both opportunities and challenges for bacteria. On one hand, they serve as platforms for biofilm formation, crucial for bacterial colonization and resilience in harsh conditions. On the other…
It has long been believed that the brain is highly modular both in terms of structure and function, although recent evidence has led some to question the extent of both types of modularity. We used artificial neural networks to test the…
Population expansions trigger many biomedical and ecological transitions, from tumor growth to invasions of non-native species. Although population spreading often selects for more invasive phenotypes, we show that this outcome is far from…
Environmental variability greatly influences the eco-evolutionary dynamics of a population, i.e. it affects how its size and composition evolve. Here, we study a well-mixed population of finite and fluctuating size whose growth is limited…
Shared resources enhance productivity yet at the same time provide channels for biological and digital contamination, turning physical or digital hygiene into a cooperation dilemma prone to free-riding. Here we introduce a game of…
The sustainability of structured biological, social, economic and ecological communities are often determined by the outcome of social conflicts between cooperative and selfish individuals (cheaters). Cheaters avoid the cost of contributing…
A local agglomeration of cooperators can support the survival or spreading of cooperation, even when cooperation is predicted to die out according to the replicator equation, which is often used in evolutionary game theory to study the…
The large-scale collective behavior of biological systems can be characterized by macroscopic transport, which arises from the non-equilibrium microscopic interactions among individual constituents. A prominent example is the formation of…
Repeated interaction between individuals is the main mechanism for maintaining cooperation in social dilemma situations. Variants of tit-for-tat (repeating the previous action of the opponent) and the win-stay lose-shift strategy are known…
The evolution of cooperation has remained an important problem in evolutionary theory and social sciences. In this regard, a curious question is why consistent cooperative and defective personalities exist and if they serve a role in the…
Collective behavior of bacterial colonies plays critical roles in adaptability, survivability, biofilm expansion and infection. We employ an individual-based model of an interstitial biofilm to study emergent pattern formation based on the…
How systems are endowed with migration capacity is a fascinating question with implications ranging from the design of novel active systems to the control of microbial populations. Bacteria, which can be found in a variety of environments,…
The spatial structure of populations may promote the emergence and maintenance of cooperation. Cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma is favored under specific update rules in evolutionary graph theory models with one individual per node of…
We study the combined influence of selection and random fluctuations on the evolutionary dynamics of two-strategy ("cooperation" and "defection") games in populations comprising cooperation facilitators. The latter are individuals that…
Geographic ranges of communities of species evolve in response to environmental, ecological, and evolutionary forces. Understanding the effects of these forces on species' range dynamics is a major goal of spatial ecology. Previous…
The relationships between diversity, productivity and scale determine much of the structure and robustness of complex biological and social systems. While arguments for the link between specialization and productivity are common, diversity…
In recent years, there has been growing interest in studying evolutionary games with environmental feedback. Previous studies exclusively focus on two-player games. However, extension to multi-player game is needed to study problems such as…
Interactions among living organisms, from bacteria colonies to human societies, are inherently more complex than interactions among particles and nonliving matter. Group interactions are a particularly important and widespread class,…