Spatial dilemmas of diffusible public goods
Name
Gore_Spatial dilemmas.pdf
Size
2.27 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7e357075eaed6232e5284c23041d8cb8
Author(s)
Allen, Benjamin
Gore, Jeff
Nowak, Martin A.
Date Issued
December 2013
Journal
eLife
Publisher
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd.
Citation
Allen, Benjamin, Jeff Gore, and Martin A Nowak. “Spatial Dilemmas of Diffusible Public Goods.” eLife 2 (December 17, 2013).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The emergence of cooperation is a central question in evolutionary biology. Microorganisms often cooperate by producing a chemical resource (a public good) that benefits other cells. The sharing of public goods depends on their diffusion through space. Previous theory suggests that spatial structure can promote evolution of cooperation, but the diffusion of public goods introduces new phenomena that must be modeled explicitly. We develop an approach where colony geometry and public good diffusion are described by graphs. We find that the success of cooperation depends on a simple relation between the benefits and costs of the public good, the amount retained by a producer, and the average amount retained by each of the producer’s neighbors. These quantities are derived as analytic functions of the graph topology and diffusion rate. In general, cooperation is favored for small diffusion rates, low colony dimensionality, and small rates of decay of the public good.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01169
