Aggregative cycles evolve as a solution to conflicts in social investment

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary biology
• Microbial ecology
• Systems biology

Background:

• Multicellular organisms face conflicts between cooperating cells and 'cheaters' that exploit collective behaviors.
• Collective movement in aggregative microbes is vulnerable to such social conflicts.
• Previous models often assume external control over aggregation and dispersal phases.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose aggregative multicellular cycles as a mechanism for temporally compartmentalizing social conflicts.
• To investigate the eco-evolutionary dynamics of cooperation and conflict in aggregative microbes.
• To understand the emergence of self-organized oscillations in microbial life cycles.

Main Methods:

• Developed an eco-evolutionary mathematical model.
• Incorporated individual and collective strategies for resource acquisition.
• Analyzed regimes of coexistence for different cell motility types.

Main Results:

• Identified an oscillatory regime mimicking life cycles of aggregative multicellular organisms.
• Observed alternating phases of solitary living and starvation-triggered aggregation.
• Demonstrated that self-organized oscillations emerge from the evolution of traits related to conflict escalation within aggregates.

Conclusions:

• Aggregative multicellular cycles can serve as an evolutionary solution to manage social conflicts.
• Self-organized oscillations are a key feature emerging from the interplay of ecology and evolution in these systems.
• The study provides a new perspective on the origins and stability of multicellularity in microbes.