Environmentally Mediated Social Dilemmas

Abstract

By consuming and producing environmental resources, organisms inevitably change their habitat. The consequences of such environmental modifications can be detrimental or beneficial not only to the focal organism but also to other organisms sharing the same environment. Social evolution theory has been very influential in studying how social interactions mediated by public goods or bads evolve by emphasising the role of spatial structure. The environmental dimensions driving these interactions, however, are typically abstracted away. Here we propose a new, environmentally-mediated taxonomy of social behaviours where organisms are categorised by their production or consumption of environmental factors that help or harm others in the environment. We discuss microbial examples of our classification and highlight the importance of environmental intermediates more generally.

An evolutionary quantitative genetics model for phenotypic (co)variances under limited dispersal, with an application to socially synergistic traits

“…This suggests that limited dispersal can profoundly influence how associations between social traits emerge in response to mutation and selection. Given the ubiquity of genetic structure in natural populations (e.g., Bohonak 1999, Charlesworth andCharlesworth 2010, p. 310), our results can help understand a wide range of patterns of intraspecific variation in competitive or social traits (such as behavioral syndromes, Dall et al 2004;Dingemanse et al 2012; social niche specialization, Bergmüller and Taborsky 2007;Montiglio et al 2013;or social division of labor, Boehm 2002;Wright et al 2014), which are increasingly thought to be ecologically significant (Bolnick et al 2011;Wolf and Weissing 2012;Sih et al 2012;Canestrelli et al 2016;Chaturvedi et al 2017;Estrela et al 2019). More broadly, by connecting different branches of theoretical evolutionary biology, from invasion analysis to adaptive dynamics to quantitative genetics, the present framework further bolsters the notion that whatever modeling approach is taken, natural selection cannot be divorced from kin selection when dispersal is limited (Hamilton 1964;Frank 1998;Rousset 2004;van Baalen M 2013;Lehmann et al 2016).…”

Invasion implies substitution in ecological communities with class-structured populations

“…where we used (15), (19) and where we have for clarity included all the arguments. Therefore, in fast population dynamical time the variables (α, p, n, n P ) fluctuate and are expected to reach their steady state while the weighted mutant frequency p α stays constant.…”

“…A central theme in evolutionary biology is to understand long-term evolution; how organisms have evolved to become adapted to their environment. Of particular relevance is to understand adaptation to biotic environments which contain, and are altered by, the interactions of the organism with members of its own and other species [15,48]. Examples of such interactions permeate the biological world, they include competition for resources, mate choice, helping behavior and cultural learning to name a few, and will here be collectively referred to as social interactions.…”

Strength of species interactions determines biodiversity and stability in microbial communities

“…Microbes interact in many ways; they can compete for resources, inhibit each other by the production of antibiotics, or support each other via cross-feeding 15,19 . Most of these interactions are mediated through the environment: bacteria chemically modify their surroundings, which directly influences them as well as other members of the community.…”