Cooperation and competition in pathogenic bacteria

Hypermutability Impedes Cooperation in Pathogenic Bacteria

When the supply of beneficial mutations limits adaptation, bacterial mutator alleles can reach high frequencies by hitchhiking with advantageous mutations. However, when populations are well adapted to their environments, the increased rate of deleterious mutations makes hypermutability selectively disadvantageous. Here, we consider a further cost of hypermutability: its potential to break down...

Multicellular behavior in bacteria: communication, cooperation, competition and cheating.

The sociobiology of bacteria, largely unappreciated and ignored by the microbiology research community two decades ago is now a major research area, catalyzed to a significant degree by studies of communication and cooperative behavior among the myxobacteria and in quorum sensing (QS) and biofilm formation by pseudomonads and other microbes. Recently, the topic of multicellular cooperative beha...

Repression of competition favours cooperation: experimental evidence from bacteria.

Repression of competition (RC) within social groups has been suggested as a key mechanism driving the evolution of cooperation, because it aligns the individual's proximate interest with the interest of the group. Despite its enormous potential for explaining cooperation across all levels of biological organization, ranging from fair meiosis, to policing in insect societies, to sanctions in mut...

Cooperation Competition Running head: A THEORY OF COOPERATION - COMPETITION A Theory of Cooperation - Competition and Beyond

This chapter is concerned with my interrelated theoretical work in the areas of cooperation competition, conflict resolution, social justice, and social relations. The theory of cooperation competition is a component of the other theories. Thus, the theory of conflict resolution is based on this theory and my Crude Law of Social Relations. My work in social justice is also based on this theory,...

Competition and Cooperation