Cooperative groups face a dilemma, in that some individuals gain social benefits without paying
the costs, termed cheating. More...
Cooperative groups face a dilemma, in that some individuals gain social benefits without paying
the costs, termed cheating. One possibility is that cheating can be countered by genetic changes
to suppress or resist it. To test the effectiveness of this mechanism, we evolved strains of the
social amoeba Dictyostelium that resist cheating. We found that resistance evolved readily, but
adaptation to one cheater left strains less well-adapted to other cheaters. To assess the genetic basis of cheater resistance, we used Illumina whole genome sequencing to identify mutations in a single isolate from each evolved line. Less...