Brief definitionThe Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) is a two-player game where there is a conflict between individual and group interests. Overall, both players do better if they both cooperate, yet each individual player does better if they defect. However, if both players defect then they do worse than if they both cooperate, hence the dilemma. This deceptively simple game has been used extensively to explore the conditions under which cooperation can evolve.
Brief definitionThe Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) is a two-player game where there is a conflict between individual and group interests. Overall, both players do better if they both cooperate, yet each individual player does better if they defect. However, if both players defect then they do worse than if they both cooperate, hence the dilemma. This deceptively simple game has been used extensively to explore the conditions under which cooperation can evolve.
Ancestral humans evolved a complex social structure still observed in extant hunter-gatherers. Here we investigate the effects of extensive sociality and mobility on the oral microbiome of 138 Agta hunter-gatherers from the Philippines. Comparisons of microbiome composition showed that the Agta are more similar to Central African Bayaka hunter-gatherers than to neighboring farmers. We also defined the Agta social microbiome as a set of 137 oral bacteria (only 7% of 1980 amplicon sequence variants) significantly influenced by social contact (quantified through wireless sensors of short-range interactions). We show that interaction networks covering large areas, and their strong links between close kin, spouses, and even unrelated friends, can significantly predict bacterial transmission networks across Agta camps. Finally, more central individuals to social networks are also bacterial supersharers. We conclude that hunter-gatherer social microbiomes, which are predominantly pathogenic, were shaped by evolutionary tradeoffs between extensive sociality and disease spread.
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