Eco-evolutionary significance of "loners"

Loners-individuals out of sync with a coordinated majority-occur frequently in nature. Are loners incidental byproducts of large-scale coordination attempts, or are they part of a mosaic of life-history strategies? Here, we provide empirical evidence of naturally occurring heritable variation in lon...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS biology 2020-03, Vol.18 (3), p.e3000642-e3000642
Main Authors: Rossine, Fernando W, Martinez-Garcia, Ricardo, Sgro, Allyson E, Gregor, Thomas, Tarnita, Corina E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amoeba
Analysis
Behavior
Biodiversity
Biological Evolution
Biological Physics
Biology and Life Sciences
Comparative analysis
Convergence (Biology)
Coordination
Decision making
Developmental stages
Dictyostelium
Dictyostelium - growth & development
Dictyostelium - physiology
Ecology
Ecology, environment
Evolutionary biology
Experiments
Funding
Genomics
Interpersonal relations
Laboratories
Life history
Life Sciences
Living alone
Models, Biological
Natural history
Partitioning
Physical Sciences
Physics
Populations and Evolution
Porosity
Quantitative Methods
Quorum Sensing
Research and Analysis Methods
Signal processing
Signaling
Slime
Slime molds
Social behavior
Social Sciences
Software
Spatio-Temporal Analysis
Stochastic Processes
Stochasticity
Supervision
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Summary:Loners-individuals out of sync with a coordinated majority-occur frequently in nature. Are loners incidental byproducts of large-scale coordination attempts, or are they part of a mosaic of life-history strategies? Here, we provide empirical evidence of naturally occurring heritable variation in loner behavior in the model social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. We propose that Dictyostelium loners-cells that do not join the multicellular life stage-arise from a dynamic population-partitioning process, the result of each cell making a stochastic, signal-based decision. We find evidence that this imperfectly synchronized multicellular development is affected by both abiotic (environmental porosity) and biotic (signaling) factors. Finally, we predict theoretically that when a pair of strains differing in their partitioning behavior coaggregate, cross-signaling impacts slime-mold diversity across spatiotemporal scales. Our findings suggest that loners could be critical to understanding collective and social behaviors, multicellular development, and ecological dynamics in D. discoideum. More broadly, across taxa, imperfect coordination of collective behaviors might be adaptive by enabling diversification of life-history strategies.
ISSN:1545-7885
1544-9173
1545-7885
DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000642