From individual behaviors to collective outcomes: fruiting body formation in Dictyostelium as a group-level phenotype
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Date
2023-03-01
Open Access Location
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Evolution
Rights
(c) 2022 The Author/s
CC BY 4.0
CC BY 4.0
Abstract
Collective phenotypes, which arise from the interactions among individuals, can be important for the evolution of higher levels of biological organization. However, how a group's composition determines its collective phenotype remains poorly understood. When starved, cells of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum cooperate to build a multicellular fruiting body, and the morphology of the fruiting body is likely advantageous to the surviving spores. We assessed how the number of strains, as well as their genetic and geographic relationships to one another, impact the group's morphology and productivity. We find that some strains consistently enhance or detract from the productivity of their groups, regardless of the identity of the other group members. We also detect extensive pairwise and higher-order genotype interactions, which collectively have a large influence on the group phenotype. Whereas previous work in Dictyostelium has focused almost exclusively on whether spore production is equitable when strains cooperate to form multicellular fruiting bodies, our results suggest a previously unrecognized impact of chimeric co-development on the group phenotype. Our results demonstrate how interactions among members of a group influence collective phenotypes and how group phenotypes might in turn impact selection on the individual.
Description
Keywords
collective behaviors, collective phenotype, conflict, cooperation, epistasis, genotype-by-genotype interaction, Dictyostelium, Phenotype, Genotype, Reproduction
Citation
Kuzdzal-Fick JJ, Moreno A, Broersma CME, Cooper TF, Ostrowski EA. (2023). From individual behaviors to collective outcomes: fruiting body formation in Dictyostelium as a group-level phenotype.. Evolution. 77. 3. (pp. 731-745).