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45 results for “Cheating”
Data from: Spite versus cheats: competition among social strategies shapes virulence in Pseudomonas aeruginosa
Social interactions have been shown to play an important role in bacterial evolution and virulence. The majority of empirical studies conducted have only considered social traits in isolation, yet numerous social traits, such as the production of spiteful bacteriocins (anti-competitor toxins) and iron-scavenging siderophores (a public good) by the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, are frequently expressed simultaneously. Crucially, both bacteriocin production and siderophore cheating can be favoured under the same competitive conditions, and we develop theory and carry out experiments to determine how the success of a bacteriocin-producing genotype is influenced by social cheating of susceptible competitors and the resultant impact on disease severity (virulence). Consistent with our theoretical predictions, we find that the spiteful genotype is favoured at higher local frequencies when competing against public good cheats. Furthermore, the relationship between spite frequency and virulence is significantly altered when the spiteful genotype is competed against cheats compared with cooperators. These results confirm the ecological and evolutionary importance of considering multiple social traits simultaneously. Moreover, our results are consistent with recent theory regarding the invasion conditions for strong reciprocity (helping cooperators and harming non-cooperators).
Data from: Quorum sensing and cheating in bacterial biofilms
The idea from human societies that self-interest can lead to a breakdown of cooperation at the group level is sometimes termed the public goods dilemma. We tested this idea in the opportunistic bacterial pathogen, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, by examining the influence of putative cheats that do not cooperate via cell-to-cell signalling (quorum-sensing, QS). We found that: (i) QS cheating occurs in biofilm populations owing to exploitation of QS-regulated public goods; (ii) the thickness and density of biofilms was reduced by the presence of non-cooperative cheats; (iii) population growth was reduced by the presence of cheats, and this reduction was greater in biofilms than in planktonic populations; (iv) the susceptibility of biofilms to antibiotics was increased by the presence of cheats; and (v) coercing cooperator cells to increase their level of cooperation decreases the extent to which the presence of cheats reduces population productivity. Our results provide clear support that conflict over public goods reduces population fitness in bacterial biofilms, and that this effect is greater than in planktonic populations. Finally, we discuss the clinical implications that arise from altering the susceptibility to antibiotics.
Data from: Rapid evolution of cheating mitochondrial genomes in small yeast populations
Outcrossed sex exposes genes to competition with their homologues, allowing alleles that transmit more often than their competitors to spread despite organismal fitness costs. Mitochondrial populations in species with biparental inheritance are thought to be especially susceptible to such cheaters because they lack strict transmission rules like meiosis or maternal inheritance. Yet the interaction between mutation and natural selection in the evolution of cheating mitochondrial genomes has not been tested experimentally. Using yeast experimental populations, we show that although cheaters were rare in a large sample of spontaneous respiratory-deficient mitochondrial mutations (petites), cheaters evolve under experimentally enforced outcrossing even when mutation supply and selection are restricted by repeatedly bottlenecking populations.
Data from: Dynamic social behaviour in a bacterium: Pseudomonas aeruginosa partially compensates for siderophore loss to cheats
Cooperation underlies diverse phenomena including the origins of multicellular life, human behaviour in economic markets and the mechanisms by which pathogenic bacteria cause disease. Experiments with microorganisms have advanced our understanding of how, when and why cooperation evolves, but the extent to which microbial cooperation can recapitulate aspects of animal behaviour is debated. For instance, understanding the evolution of behavioural response rules (how should one individual respond to another's decision to cooperate or defect?) is a key part of social evolution theory, but the possible existence of such rules in social microbes has not been explored. In one specific context (biparental care in animals), cooperation is maintained if individuals respond to a partner's defection by increasing their own investment into cooperation, but not so much that this fully compensates for the defector's lack of investment. This is termed 'partial compensation.' Here, I show that partial compensation for the presence of non-cooperating 'cheats' is also observed in a microbial social behaviour: the cooperative production of iron-scavenging siderophores by the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. A period of evolution in the presence of cheats maintains this response, whereas evolution in the absence of cheats leads to a loss of compensatory behaviour. These results demonstrate i) the remarkable flexibility of bacterial social behaviour; ii) the potential generality of partial compensation as a social response rule; and iii) the need for mathematical models to explore the evolution of response rules in multi-player social interactions.
Data from: Limiting opportunities for cheating stabilizes virulence in insect parasitic nematodes
Cooperative secretion of virulence factors by pathogens can lead to social conflict when cheating mutants exploit collective secretion, but do not contribute to it. If cheats outcompete cooperators within hosts, this can cause loss of virulence. Insect parasitic nematodes are important biocontrol tools that secrete a range of significant virulence factors. Critically, effective nematodes are hard to maintain without live passage, which can lead to virulence attenuation. Using experimental evolution we tested whether social cheating might explain unstable virulence in the nematode Heterorhabditis floridensis by manipulating relatedness via multiplicity of infection (MOI), and the scale of competition. Passage at high MOI, which should reduce relatedness, led to loss of fitness: virulence and reproductive rate declined together and all eight independent lines suffered premature extinction. As theory predicts, relatedness treatments had more impact under stronger global competition. In contrast, low MOI passage led to more stable virulence and increased reproduction. Moreover, low MOI lineages showed a trade-off between virulence and reproduction, particularly for lines under stronger between-host competition. Overall, this study indicates that evolution of virulence theory is valuable for the culture of biocontrol agents: effective nematodes can be improved and maintained if passage methods mitigate possible social conflicts.
Data from: Silk wrapping of nuptial gifts aids cheating behaviour in male spiders
Sexual traits, such as nuptial gifts, are costly and often condition-dependent. Males should be under selection to reduce these costs without impairing their reproductive success. Spider gifts consist of silk-wrapped food, but may also consist of worthless (non-nutritive) donations that successfully lead to mating, despite yielding shorter copulations. Worthless gifts may either represent a cheaper cheating strategy or the inability to produce genuine gifts due to resource limitations (i.e. poor body condition). Unless energetic constraints limit expenditure in silk, males should apply more silk to worthless gifts to compensate for their lower reproductive value. We ask whether in Pisaura mirabilis 1) worthless gifts are condition-dependent and 2) males strategically use silk based on gift type (genuine vs worthless). We tested whether male body condition explains the gift-giving strategy and compared silk amounts covering each gift type, in gifts collected from the field and produced in the laboratory by males given different feeding regimes. Our findings show that worthless gifts are not promoted by poor body condition or limited resources. They rather result from a cheating strategy evolved to opportunistically reduce the costs of genuine gifts while ensuring nutritional advantages, with cheaters gaining body mass. Males applied more silk to worthless gifts regardless of their body condition or feeding state, suggesting they can strategically adjust silk expenditure despite its costs. By masking gift contents and prolonging female feeding, silk is crucial for the maintenance of cheating, likely resulting from an evolutionary arms race between male deception and female assessment.
Data from: Phage selection for bacterial cheats leads to population decline
While predators and parasites are known for their effects on bacterial population biology, their impact on the dynamics of bacterial social evolution remains largely unclear. Siderophores are iron-chelating molecules that are key to the survival of certain bacterial species in iron-limited environments, but their production can be subject to cheating by non-producing phenotypes. In a selection experiment conducted over c 20 bacterial generations and involving 140 populations of the pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1, we assessed the impact of a lytic phage on competition between siderophore producers and non-producers. We show that the presence of lytic phages favours the non-producing genotype in competition, regardless of whether iron use relies on siderophores. Interestingly, phage pressure resulted in higher siderophore production, which constitutes a cost to the producers and may explain why they were outcompeted by non-producers. At the end of the experiment, however, cheating load reduced the fitness of mixed populations relative to producer monocultures, and only monocultures of producers managed to grow in the presence of phage in situations where siderophores were necessary to access iron. These results suggest that public goods production may be modulated in the presence of natural enemies with consequences for the evolution of social strategies.
Data from: Cost of cooperation rules selection for cheats in bacterial metapopulations
Bacteria secrete a large variety of beneficial metabolites into the environment, which can be shared as public goods among producing bacteria, but also be exploited by non-producing cheats. Here, we focus on cooperative production of iron-chelating molecules (siderophores) in the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa to study how relevant ecological factors influence selection for cheating. We designed patch-structured metapopulations that allowed us introducing among-patch ecological variation. We found that cheating readily evolved in uniform iron-limited environments. This finding is explained by severe iron limitation demanding high siderophore-production efforts, which results in high metabolic costs accruing to cooperators, and thereby facilitates the spread of cheats. In contrast, we observed a significant reduction or even negation of selection for cheating in metapopulations where we introduced patches with increased iron availability and/or opportunities to recycle siderophores. These findings are compatible with the view that cheats are less likely to invade in environments that allow bacteria to reduce siderphore-production efforts, as this lowers the overall metabolic costs accruing to cooperators. Because we increased iron availability and siderophore recycling opportunities moderately, and only in some patches, our findings demonstrate that already small local variations in ecological conditions as occurring in nature can significantly affect selection for public-good secretion in microbes. In addition, we found that most (84.6%) of the evolved cheats were partially deficient for siderophore production and not loss-of-function mutants. Genetic considerations indicate that mutations leading to partial deficiency occur more frequent than mutations leading to loss of function, but also suggest that partially-deficient mutants might often be the more competitive cheats.
Data from: Cheating and resistance to cheating in natural populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens
Bacteria perform cooperative behaviours that are exploitable by non-cooperative cheats, and cheats frequently arise and coexist with cooperators in laboratory microcosms. However, evidence of competitive dynamics between cooperators and cheats in nature remains limited. Using the production of pyoverdine, an iron-scavenging molecule, and natural soil populations of Pseudomonas fluorescens, we found that (1) non-producers are present in the population; (2) they co-occur (<1cm3) with pyoverdine producers; (3) they retain functional pyoverdine receptors and (4) they can utilize the pyoverdine of on average 52% of producers. This suggests non-producers can potentially act as social cheats in soil: utilizing the pyoverdine of others while producing little or none themselves. However, we found considerable variation in the extent to which non-producers can exploit cooperators, as some cooperators appear to produce exclusive forms of pyoverdine or kill non-producers with toxins. We examined the consequences of this variation using theoretical modeling. Variance in exploitability leads to some cheats gaining increased fitness benefits and others decreased benefits. However, the absolute gain in fitness from high exploitation is lower than the drop in fitness from low exploitation, decreasing the mean fitness of cheats and subsequently lowering the proportion of cheats maintained in the population Our results suggest that although cooperator-cheat dynamics can occur in soil, a range of mechanisms can prevent non-producers from exploiting cooperators.
Data from: Co-evolutionary dynamics between public good producers and cheats in the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa
The production of beneficial public goods is common in the microbial world, and so is cheating – the exploitation of public goods by non-producing mutants. Here, we examine co-evolutionary dynamics between cooperators and cheats and ask whether cooperators can evolve strategies to reduce the burden of exploitation, and whether cheats in turn can improve their exploitation abilities. We evolved cooperators of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, producing the shareable iron-scavenging siderophore pyoverdine, together with cheats, defective in pyoverdine production but proficient in uptake. We found that cooperators managed to co-exist with cheats in 56% of all replicates over approximately 150 generations of experimental evolution. Growth and competition assays revealed that co-existence was fostered by a combination of general adaptions to the media and specific adaptions to the co-evolving opponent. Phenotypic screening and whole-genome re-sequencing of evolved clones confirmed this pattern, and suggest that cooperators became less exploitable by cheats because they significantly reduced their pyoverdine investment. Cheats, meanwhile, improved exploitation efficiency through mutations blocking the costly pyoverdine-signalling pathway. Moreover, cooperators and cheats evolved reduced motility, a pattern that likely represents adaptation to laboratory conditions, but at the same time also affects social interactions by reducing strain mixing and pyoverdine sharing. Overall, we observed parallel evolution, where co-existence of cooperators and cheats was enabled by a combination of adaptations to the abiotic and social environment and their interactions.
When cheating turns into a stabilizing mechanism of plant-pollinator communities
<p>This repository is a complete update to the one linked to our preprint (https://zenodo.org/records/8272889). It includes:</p><ul><li>R codes to reproduce simulations, empirical analyses and figures</li><li>results of theoretical simulations (data_for_analyses.txt in simulations_results)</li><li>empirical data to reproduce analyses (traits_data.csv<i> & </i>empirical_data.csv in empirical<i>_</i>data folder)</li><li>results of simulations calibrated by empirical networks (equilibriums_analyse_empir.txt in simulations_results)</li><li>results of simulations for randomized empirical cheating patterns (equilibriums_analyse_empir_null.txt in simulations_results)</li></ul><p>R (v. 4.3.0) codes are also available here: <a href="https://github.com/f-duchenne/Cheating_in_mutualistic_networks">https://github.com/f-duchenne/Cheating_in_mutualistic_networks</a></p>
Cheating interactions favor modularity in mutualistic networks
<p>A fundamental fact about mutualisms is that these mutually beneficial interactions often harbor cheaters that benefit from the use of resources and services without providing any positive feedback to the other players. The role of cheaters on the evolutionary dynamics of mutualisms has long been recognized, yet their broader consequences to the community level, and beyond species they interact with, is still poorly understood. Because mutualisms form networks that often involve dozens to hundreds of species, indirect effects generated by cheaters may cascade through the whole community, reshaping trait evolution. Here, we study how harboring cheating interactions can influence coevolution in mutualistic networks. We combine a coevolutionary model, empirical data on animal-plant mutualistic networks, and numerical simulations and show that a higher frequency of cheating interactions in a network can lead to the formation of groups of species phenotypically similar to each other and distinct from other groups, generating higher trait disparity. The resulting clustered trait patterns, in turn, change the patterns of interaction in simulated networks, fostering the formation of modules of interacting species. Our results indicate that cheaters contribute to generate phenotypic clusters in mutualistic networks, counteracting selection for convergence imposed by mutualists, and favoring the emergence of modules of interacting species. Based on these results, we suggest that cheaters might be a fundamental element for our understanding of the evolution of mutualistic networks.</p>
Data from: Rapid evolution of cheating mitochondrial genomes in small yeast populations
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Data from: Cost of cooperation rules selection for cheats in bacterial metapopulations
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Data from: Cheating and resistance to cheating in natural populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens
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Data from: An experimental test of whether cheating is context dependent
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Data from: Co-evolutionary dynamics between public good producers and cheats in the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa
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Data from: Limiting opportunities for cheating stabilizes virulence in insect parasitic nematodes
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Data from: Spite versus cheats: competition among social strategies shapes virulence in Pseudomonas aeruginosa
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Data from: Silk wrapping of nuptial gifts aids cheating behaviour in male spiders
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