Biology Faculty Articles
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-18-2023
Publication Title
iScience
ISSN
2589-0042
Volume
26
First Page
107344
Abstract
Prosocial behavior is ubiquitous in nature despite the relative fitness costs carried by cooperative individuals. However, the stability of cooperation in populations is fragile and often maintained through enforcement. We propose that homologous recombination provides such a mechanism in bacteria. Using an agent-based model of recombination in bacteria playing a public goods game, we demonstrate how changes in recombination rates affect the proportion of cooperating cells. In our model, recombination converts cells to a different strategy, either freeloading (cheaters) or cooperation, based on the strategies of neighboring cells and recombination rate. Increasing the recombination rate expands the parameter space in which cooperators outcompete freeloaders. However, increasing the recombination rate alone is neither sufficient nor necessary. Intermediate benefits of cooperation, lower population viscosity, and greater population size can promote the evolution of cooperation from within populations of cheaters. Our findings demonstrate how recombination influences the persistence of cooperative behavior in bacteria.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
NSUWorks Citation
Lee, Isaiah Paolo A.; Omar Tonsi Eldakar; J. Peter Gogarten; and Cheryl P. Andam. 2023. "Recombination as an Enforcement Mechanism of Prosocial Behavior in Cooperating Bacteria." iScience 26, (): 107344. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2023.107344.
ORCID ID
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4807-4979
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2023.107344
Comments
ª 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).