IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v408y2000i6815d10.1038_35050087.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Altruism and social cheating in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum

Author

Listed:
  • Joan E. Strassmann

    (Rice University)

  • Yong Zhu

    (Rice University)

  • David C. Queller

    (Rice University)

Abstract

The social amoeba, Dictyostelium discoideum, is widely used as a simple model organism for multicellular development1,2, but its multicellular fruiting stage is really a society. Most of the time, D. discoideum lives as haploid, free-living, amoeboid cells that divide asexually. When starved, 104–105 of these cells aggregate into a slug. The anterior 20% of the slug altruistically differentiates into a non-viable stalk, supporting the remaining cells, most of which become viable spores3,4,5. If aggregating cells come from multiple clones, there should be selection for clones to exploit other clones by contributing less than their proportional share to the sterile stalk. Here we use microsatellite markers to show that different clones collected from a field population readily mix to form chimaeras. Half of the chimaeric mixtures show a clear cheater and victim. Thus, unlike the clonal and highly cooperative development of most multicellular organisms, the development of D. discoideum is partly competitive, with conflicts of interests among cells. These conflicts complicate the use of D. discoideum as a model for some aspects of development, but they make it highly attractive as a model system for social evolution.

Suggested Citation

  • Joan E. Strassmann & Yong Zhu & David C. Queller, 2000. "Altruism and social cheating in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum," Nature, Nature, vol. 408(6815), pages 965-967, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:408:y:2000:i:6815:d:10.1038_35050087
    DOI: 10.1038/35050087
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/35050087
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/35050087?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dimitris Iliopoulos & Arend Hintze & Christoph Adami, 2010. "Critical Dynamics in the Evolution of Stochastic Strategies for the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(10), pages 1-8, October.
    2. Peña, Jorge & Cooper, Guy Alexander & Liu, Ming & West, Stuart Andrew, 2020. "Dividing labour in social microorganisms: coordinated or random specialisation?," IAST Working Papers 20-104, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    3. Van Cleve, Jeremy, 2015. "Social evolution and genetic interactions in the short and long term," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 2-26.
    4. Mariko Katoh-Kurasawa & Peter Lehmann & Gad Shaulsky, 2024. "The greenbeard gene tgrB1 regulates altruism and cheating in Dictyostelium discoideum," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.
    5. Fernando W Rossine & Ricardo Martinez-Garcia & Allyson E Sgro & Thomas Gregor & Corina E Tarnita, 2020. "Eco-evolutionary significance of “loners”," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(3), pages 1-27, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:408:y:2000:i:6815:d:10.1038_35050087. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.