IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v461y2009i7266d10.1038_nature08472.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cheater-resistance is not futile

Author

Listed:
  • Anupama Khare

    (Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, Texas 77030, USA)

  • Lorenzo A. Santorelli

    (Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, Texas 77030, USA
    Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA)

  • Joan E. Strassmann

    (Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA)

  • David C. Queller

    (Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA)

  • Adam Kuspa

    (Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, Texas 77030, USA
    Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA
    Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, Texas 77030, USA)

  • Gad Shaulsky

    (Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, Texas 77030, USA
    Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA)

Abstract

'Noble' mutant beats cheats Individual social amoebae such as Dictyostelium must cooperate to build the fruiting bodies through which they reproduce. As with all societies, this process is highly susceptible to cheats who reap the benefits but don't contribute to the cost. But cheats don't always prosper. Cheating behaviour is limited by various mechanisms, such as kin discrimination and lower fitness of the cheater. Theory suggests that mutants resistant to cheaters will also arise, and now a cheater-resistant D. discoideum has been isolated. Cheater-resistance appears to be a 'noble' strategy, because the resister does not necessarily exploit the other strains, and so preserves cooperation.

Suggested Citation

  • Anupama Khare & Lorenzo A. Santorelli & Joan E. Strassmann & David C. Queller & Adam Kuspa & Gad Shaulsky, 2009. "Cheater-resistance is not futile," Nature, Nature, vol. 461(7266), pages 980-982, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:461:y:2009:i:7266:d:10.1038_nature08472
    DOI: 10.1038/nature08472
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08472
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature08472?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dimitris Iliopoulos & Arend Hintze & Christoph Adami, 2010. "Critical Dynamics in the Evolution of Stochastic Strategies for the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(10), pages 1-8, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:461:y:2009:i:7266:d:10.1038_nature08472. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.