dictyNews
Electronic Edition
Volume 41, number 10
May 15, 2015

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=========
Abstracts
=========


Elizabeth Ostrowski, Yufeng Shen, Xiangjun Tian, Richard 
Sucgang, Huaiyang Jiang, Jiaxin Qu, Mariko Katoh-Kurasawa, 
Debra Brock, Christopher Dinh, Fremiet Lara-Garduno, 
Sandra Lee, Christie Kovar, Huyen Dinh, Viktoriya Korchina, 
Laronda Jackson, Shobha Patil, Yi Han,  Leslie Chaboub, 
Gad Shaulsky, Donna Muzny, Kim Worley, Richard Gibbs, 
Stephen Richards, Adam Kuspa, Joan Strassmann, and 
David Queller.

Genomic signatures of cooperation and conflict in the 
social amoeba.


Current Biology, in press.

Cooperative systems are susceptible to invasion by selfish 
individuals that profit from receiving the social benefits 
but fail to contribute. These so-called “cheaters” can have 
a fitness advantage in the laboratory, but it is unclear 
whether cheating provides an important selective advantage 
in nature. We used a population genomic approach to examine 
the history of genes involved in cheating behaviors in the 
social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, testing whether 
these genes experience rapid evolutionary change as a result
 of conflict over spore-stalk fate. Candidate genes and 
 surrounding regions showed elevated polymorphism, unusual 
 patterns of linkage disequilibrium, and lower levels of 
 population differentiation, but they did not show greater 
 between-species divergence. The signatures were most 
 consistent with frequency-dependent selection acting to 
 maintain multiple alleles, suggesting that conflict may 
 lead to stalemate rather than an escalating arms race. Our 
 results reveal the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation 
 and cheating and underscore how sequence-based approaches 
 can be used to elucidate the history of conflicts that are 
 difficult to observe directly.

Submitted by Elizabeth Ostrowski [[log in to unmask]]
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