Competition between species can drive public-goods cooperation within a species
Name
792819422-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
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4.44 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
f3fe8e921ec99def4e8e236d2b2e2e4a
Author(s)
Celiker, Hasan
Advisor(s)
Jeff Gore.
Date Issued
2012
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Costly cooperative strategies are vulnerable to exploitation by cheats. Microbial studies have suggested that cooperation can be maintained in nature by mechanisms such as reciprocity, spatial structure and multi-level selection. So far, however, almost all laboratory experiments aimed at understanding cooperation have relied on studying a single species in isolation. In contrast, species in the wild live within complex communities where they interact with other species. Little effort has focused on understanding the effect of interspecies competition on the evolution of cooperation within a species. We test this relationship by using sucrose metabolism of budding yeast as a model cooperative system. We find that when co-cultured with a bacterial competitor, yeast populations become more cooperative compared to isolated populations. We show that this increase in cooperation within yeast is mainly driven by resource competition imposed by the bacterial competitor. A similar increase in cooperation is observed i
Description
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2012.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 40-43).
Subjects
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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