Acknowledging selection at sub-organismal levels resolves controversy on pro-cooperation mechanisms

  1. Wenying Shou  Is a corresponding author
  1. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States

Abstract

Cooperators who pay a cost to produce publically-available benefits can be exploited by cheaters who do not contribute fairly. How might cooperation persist against cheaters? Two classes of mechanisms are known to promote cooperation: 'partner choice', where a cooperator preferentially interacts with cooperative over cheating partners; and 'partner fidelity feedback' (PFF), where repeated interactions between individuals ensure that cheaters suffer as their cooperative partners languish (see, for example, Momeni et al., 2013). However when both mechanisms can act, differentiating them has generated controversy. Here, I resolve this controversy by noting that selection can operate on organismal and sub-organismal 'entities' such that partner fidelity feedback at sub-organismal level can appear as partner choice at organismal level. I also show that cooperation between multicellular eukaryotes and mitochondria is promoted by partner fidelity feedback and partner choice between sub-organismal entities, in addition to being promoted by partner fidelity feedback between hosts and symbionts, as was previously known.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Wenying Shou

    Division of Basic Sciences, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, United States
    For correspondence
    wshou@fhcrc.org
    Competing interests
    Wenying Shou, Reviewing editor, eLife.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Diethard Tautz, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Germany

Version history

  1. Received: July 15, 2015
  2. Accepted: December 21, 2015
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: December 29, 2015 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: March 11, 2016 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2015, Shou

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Wenying Shou
(2015)
Acknowledging selection at sub-organismal levels resolves controversy on pro-cooperation mechanisms
eLife 4:e10106.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10106

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https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10106

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