Temperature, the presence of an enemy species and the density of the mutualistic partner species interact to determine the expression of a protective mutualism.

Novel high-throughput co-culture assays reveal how the spatial structure of colony biofilms provides opportunities for nutrient and matrix sharing and may drive the evolution of cooperative behaviors.

Discovery of a secreted protein from resident gut bacteria that reduced intestinal innate immune responses which would otherwise simultaneously compromise both bacterial and host survival.

Experiments and mathematical modelling show that rare nitrogen fixing symbionts invade a population dominated by non-fixing bacteria across plant generations, above a threshold of a combination of ecological factors.

The capacity for symbiosis between photosynthetic microalgae and early diverging lineages fungi was demonstrated with microscopy and stable isotope exchange of carbon and nitrogen.

Whereas partner-serving phenotype is intuitively quantified as benefit release rate, molecular genetics revealed an example where this thinking fails, motivating a more general metric.

Mutations that directly benefit both self and cooperative partner can readily evolve to promote cooperation.

Domestication of endosymbiotic Mollicutes may have resolved nitrogen-recycling challenges for attine ants and enabled the evolutionary derived leaf-cutting ants to fully exploit their herbivorous niches.

Two cooperative populations of yeast cells that cannot distinguish between cooperative partners and cheating intruders can still self-organize into clusters that exclude cheaters.

A framework has been devised that enables global participation in the curation of publications on any topic involving two or more living organisms, ranging from microscopic to larger sizes, in their natural or artificial environments or ecosystems.