Disease-Induced Cooperation Mitigates Populations Against Decline: The Cascade Effect of Cooperation Evolution

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

卷:10

Menglan Cao¹  Feng Zhang¹  Ruiwu Wang²  Lei Shi³ 

[1] Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Wetland Ecosystem Protection and Restoration, School of Resources and Environmental Engineering, Anhui University, Hefei, China;

[2] School of Ecology and Environment, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China;

[3] School of Statistics and Mathematics, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, Kunming, China;

关键词: altruistic behavior;    mutualistic interaction;    eco-evolutionary feedback;    bi-stability;    defection-driven extinction;    assortment;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fevo.2022.758659

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Due to density-dependent selection, the ecological factors impacting population dynamics can play an important role in promoting cooperation, and accordingly, benefit a population from the eco-evolutionary feedback. This implies that cooperation between individuals could help resist the attack of infectious diseases. Yet, little is known about how cooperation evolves in response to infections. We here examined theoretically the impact of disease infections with various transmission types on cooperation evolution and its feedback to population dynamics. Results show that infected populations can evolve to be more cooperative, and the level of cooperation increases with the transmission rate, which can protect the population against decline due to infection and prevent population extinction driven by defection. A high transmission rate can stabilize population fluctuation, while a relatively low transmission rate could destabilize population dynamics. We argue that the mechanism underlying such stress-induced cooperation is analogous to the cascade effect of trophic interactions in food webs: reduction in selfishness from environmental stress indirectly relaxes the exploitation of cooperators by defectors. These findings emphasize the role of eco-evolutionary feedback in evolving cooperation and the ecological significance of cooperation evolution for populations withstanding disease infection.

【 授权许可】

Unknown