Lee, William, van Baalen, Minus and Jansen, Vincent A. A. (2012) An evolutionary mechanism for diversity in siderophore‐producing bacteria. Ecology Letters, 15 (2).
Full text access: Open
Bacteria produce a great diversity of siderophores to scavenge for iron in their environment. We suggest that this diversity results from the interplay between siderophore producers (cooperators) and non‐producers (cheaters): when there are many cheaters exploiting a siderophore type it is beneficial for a mutant to produce a siderophore unusable by the dominant population. We formulated and analysed a mathematical model for tagged public goods to investigate the potential for the emergence of diversity. We found that, although they are rare most of the time, cheaters play a key role in maintaining diversity by regulating the different populations of cooperators. This threshold‐triggered feedback prevents any stain of cooperators from dominating the others. Our study provides a novel general mechanism for the evolution of diversity that may apply to many forms of social behaviour.
This is a Approved version This version's date is: 2/2012 This item is not peer reviewed
https://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/a71bcd80-8794-d856-825b-aeaf4415096c/7/
Deposited by Research Information System (atira) on 25-Jun-2013 in Royal Holloway Research Online.Last modified on 25-Jun-2013