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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 28, 2026

Extinction Training During the Reconsolidation Window Prevents Recovery of Fear

Extinction Training During the Reconsolidation Window Prevents Recovery of Fear

Published on: August 24, 2012

Defectors Can Create Conditions That Rescue Cooperation.

Adam James Waite^1,2, Caroline Cannistra², Wenying Shou²

¹Molecular and Cellular Biology Program, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America.

Plos Computational Biology

|December 23, 2015

Summary

Defectors can paradoxically help cooperation persist. By causing population collapse, they create small population sizes that favor cooperators in structured environments, sometimes rescuing cooperation from extinction.

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Published on: September 16, 2016

Area of Science:

Evolutionary Biology
Game Theory
Population Dynamics

Background:

Cooperation involving costly public goods is common but vulnerable to exploitation by defectors.
Defector exploitation can lead to population collapse, threatening cooperation's survival.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how population collapse, induced by defectors, can paradoxically rescue cooperation.
To identify mechanisms by which defectors might facilitate the persistence of cooperation in structured populations.

Main Methods:

Individual-based modeling of stochastic birth, death, migration, and mutation events.
Simulation of population dynamics under varying conditions of cooperation and defection.

Main Results:

Defector-induced population collapse can lead to random extinction of defectors, allowing cooperators to recover.
Empty habitats created by collapse favor cooperator migration and growth over defectors.
Resource limitation, induced by defectors, can select for beneficial mutations that further support cooperation.

Conclusions:

Small population sizes, precipitated by defectors, act as a built-in mechanism for cooperation persistence in structured populations.
The initial presence of defectors can, counterintuitively, enhance the long-term survival of cooperation.