Evolutionary theory articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Collective cooperation is found across many social and biological systems. Here, the authors find that infrequent hub updates promote the emergence of collective cooperation and develop an algorithm that optimises collective cooperation with update rates.

    • Yao Meng
    • , Sean P. Cornelius
    •  & Aming Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hanley et al show that transmission of dengue and Zika virus from Old and New World monkeys is shaped by an immunologically-mediated trade-off between magnitude and duration of replication. Patterns of Zika transmission suggests high risk of spillback into neotropical monkeys.

    • Kathryn A. Hanley
    • , Hélène Cecilia
    •  & Shannan L. Rossi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bet hedging is an evolutionary strategy facilitating survival in randomly fluctuating environments. Here, the authors report bet hedging in the unicellular microalga Haematococcus pluvialis, undergoing reversible diversification into mobile and non-mobile cells.

    • Si Tang
    • , Yaqing Liu
    •  & Zhonghua Cai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear whether naturally evolved de novo proteins have stable, folded structures. Here, through systematic identification and structural modeling of de novo genes, this study reveals that a small subset of these proteins may have well-folded structures, and were likely born with these structures.

    • Junhui Peng
    •  & Li Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Live poultry markets in rural areas can be hotspots for transmission of pathogens, but the effects of markets on selection of viral virulence are not known. This study demonstrates through mathematical modelling that high turnover rate and persistence of viral particles can select for highly virulent pathogens in markets.

    • Justin K. Sheen
    • , Fidisoa Rasambainarivo
    •  & C. Jessica E. Metcalf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about how malaria parasites adapt the speed of their development to their mosquito vectors. Using an evolutionary modelling framework, this study predicts that the metabolic status of mosquitoes shapes the parasites’ life-history strategies and transmission dynamics.

    • Paola Carrillo-Bustamante
    • , Giulia Costa
    •  & Elena A. Levashina

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Global epistasis can be used to reconstruct fitness landscapes and infer adaptive trajectories. Here, the authors investigate how environmental variation impacts patterns of global epistasis, finding that global epistasis in the malaria parasite P. falciparum can be modulated by drug concentration in the environment.

    • Juan Diaz-Colunga
    • , Alvaro Sanchez
    •  & C. Brandon Ogbunugafor

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The microbiome is thought to be important for its host’s wellbeing, but it varies much among individuals. We offer a solution to this conundrum, showing that factors like the form of microbes’ contribution to hosts’ fitness and host population size may be preventing natural selection from operating effectively.

    • Itay Daybog
    •  & Oren Kolodny

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studies of the evolution of cooperation often assume information use that is inconsistent with empirical observations. Here, the authors’ research on general imitation dynamics reveals that cooperation is fostered by individuals using less personal information and more social information.

    • Xiaochen Wang
    • , Lei Zhou
    •  & Aming Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animals differ remarkably in how parental care is distributed between the male and female parent. Here, the authors use evolutionary simulations to reveal that sex differences in care readily emerge in a characteristic manner that is not captured by current sex role theory.

    • Xiaoyan Long
    •  & Franz J. Weissing

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studies on mutant invasion typically assume populations in isolation, rather than part of an ecological community. Here, the authors use computational models to investigate how enemy-victim interactions influence properties of mutant invasion, showing that selection is substantially weakened.

    • Dominik Wodarz
    •  & Natalia L. Komarova

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    A recent study demonstrated the existence of mutations that facilitate access to efficient evolutionary solutions. Here I discuss the implications of this finding and the potential to open a new chapter in the study of evolvability.

    • C. Brandon Ogbunugafor

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chronic infection with the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa often leads to coexistence of heterogeneous bacterial populations carrying diverse mutations. Here, Zhao et al. use genetic and multi-omics functional analyses to shed light on the multistage evolution of bacterial populations in the lungs of chronically infected patients.

    • Kelei Zhao
    • , Xiting Yang
    •  & Xikun Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In nature, bacteria experience gradients of antibiotics, but we know little about how such heterogeneity affects bacterial adaptation. Piskovsky and Oliveira develop quantitative models of bacterial adaptation in antibiotic landscapes and find that bacterial motility can govern the spatiotemporal dynamics of antibiotic resistance evolution.

    • Vit Piskovsky
    •  & Nuno M. Oliveira

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Triple artemisinin-based combination therapies have shown high efficacy for treatment of malaria in preliminary studies. Here, the authors use mathematical modelling to assess whether these therapies could also delay the emergence and spread of antimalarial drug resistance when compared against frontline therapies.

    • Tran Dang Nguyen
    • , Bo Gao
    •  & Ricardo Aguas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In stochastic games, there is a feedback loop between a group’s social behaviors and its environment. Kleshnina et al. show that groups are often more cooperative when they know the exact state of their environment, although there are also intriguing cases when ignorance is beneficial.

    • Maria Kleshnina
    • , Christian Hilbe
    •  & Martin A. Nowak

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Previous, a long-term evolution experiment in E.coli resulted in spontaneous emergence of ecotypes that coexisted for more than 14,000 generations. Here, the authors show that the emergence and persistence of this phenomenon results from two interacting trade-offs, rooted in biochemical constraints.

    • Avik Mukherjee
    • , Jade Ealy
    •  & Markus Basan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most of the mutations accumulated in cancer cells are deleterious, and it is unclear how such alterations are tolerated. Here, the authors propose that copy number amplifications could increase the tolerance to deleterious mutations, and analyse the features that could determine the underlying selection process.

    • Fabio Alfieri
    • , Giulio Caravagna
    •  & Martin H. Schaefer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Protein secondary structures–α-helices and β-sheets–are generally assumed to be fixed over evolutionary history. By leveraging sequence information and sensitive statistical techniques, this work proposes that secondary structures in naturally occurring DNA-binding proteins switched in response to stepwise mutation.

    • Devlina Chakravarty
    • , Shwetha Sreenivasan
    •  & Lauren L. Porter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Indirect reciprocity describes how cooperation arises in a community when its members value their reputation. Here, the authors show that nuanced assessments of observations can mitigate disagreements and errors when the opinions of community members are not synchronized.

    • Laura Schmid
    • , Farbod Ekbatani
    •  & Krishnendu Chatterjee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cellular plasticity is a core biological process; however, observing diversity in non-genetic inheritance and the resulting phenotypic outputs, is challenging. Here the authors develop a non-genetically based tracing technology which can be used to reveal lineage-linked transcriptome plasticity.

    • Yelyzaveta Shlyakhtina
    • , Bianca Bloechl
    •  & Maximiliano M. Portal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Division of labour, where members of a group specialise on different tasks, is a central feature of many social organisms. Using a theoretical model, the authors demonstrate that division of labour can emerge spontaneously within a group of entirely identical individuals.

    • Jan J. Kreider
    • , Thijs Janzen
    •  & Franz J. Weissing

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rewards can motivate people to cooperate, but the evolution of rewarding behavior is itself poorly understood. Here, a game-theoretic analysis shows that reputation effects facilitate the simultaneous evolution of cooperation and social rewarding policies.

    • Saptarshi Pal
    •  & Christian Hilbe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Women generally mount a stronger immune response to infections than men do, resulting in a higher impact of autoimmune diseases. Here, the authors show that pathogen transmission from mother-to-child during pregnancy drives the co-evolution of a stout defence against harmless pathogens in women.

    • Evan Mitchell
    • , Andrea L. Graham
    •  & Geoff Wild

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Why do males typically compete more intensely for mating opportunities than do females and how does this relate to sex differences in gamete size? A new study provides a formal evolutionary link between gamete size dimorphism and ‘Bateman gradients’, which describe how much individuals of each sex benefit from additional matings.

    • Jonathan M. Henshaw
    • , Adam G. Jones
    •  & Lukas Schärer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In 1948, Bateman asserted that sexual selection is driven by the sex difference in gamete numbers. Lehtonen presents mathematical models broadly validating this controversial claim, while pointing out selection can be reversed under some conditions.

    • Jussi Lehtonen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traits that facilitate adaptive responses to novel environments may facilitate global radiations. Here, the authors describe diversification dynamics of crows, finding that their global radiation coincides with high rates of phenotypic and climatic niche evolution.

    • Joan Garcia-Porta
    • , Daniel Sol
    •  & Carlos A. Botero

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The observation that tissues that undergo more stem cell divisions are less prone to develop cancer presents a paradox as these tissues should have more opportunity to accumulate cancer-causing mutations. Here, the authors present a solution to the paradox by showing how hierarchical tissues can maintain low cancer incidence by balancing mutation accumulation and the cells’ commitment to differentiation.

    • Márton Demeter
    • , Imre Derényi
    •  & Gergely J. Szöllősi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    ‘Macroevolution posed difficulties for Darwin and later theorists because species frequently change abruptly, or experience long periods of stasis, both counter to the theory of incremental change or gradualism. Here, the authors propose a macroevolutionary statistical model that accommodates this uneven evolutionary landscape, and shows how even abrupt macroevolutionary changes are compatible with gradualist microevolutionary processes.’

    • Mark Pagel
    • , Ciara O’Donovan
    •  & Andrew Meade

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In many instances of reciprocity, individuals cooperate in turns. Here, the authors analyze the equilibria and the dynamics of such alternating games, and in particular describe all strategies with one-round memory that maintain cooperation.

    • Peter S. Park
    • , Martin A. Nowak
    •  & Christian Hilbe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A decline of selection with age is generally seen as the reason that ageing evolves. But selection can also increase with age. What happens then? This work shows that ageing nevertheless evolves, and so does the decline of selection with age.

    • Stefano Giaimo
    •  & Arne Traulsen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In microorganisms, the cells within a population often show extreme phenotypic variation with different mechanisms used to determine how distinct phenotypes are allocated. This study uses theoretical models to examine the relative advantages of the two dominant mechanisms, coordinated and random determination, in dividing labour between reproductives and helpers in microorganisms.

    • Guy Alexander Cooper
    • , Ming Liu
    •  & Stuart Andrew West

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The origin of primary plastids in an ancestor of Archaeplastida gave eukaryotes photosynthetic capabilities. This study used single-cell genomics and phylogenomics to infer the evolutionary origin of the plastid-lacking phylum Picozoa, a group of marine microbial heterotrophic eukaryotes, showing that they belong to the Archaeplastida and changing our understanding of plastid evolution.

    • Max E. Schön
    • , Vasily V. Zlatogursky
    •  & Fabien Burki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear why C. elegans continues to produce large quantities of yolk after reproduction. Here the authors show that post-reproductive C. elegans mothers vent yolk which supports their offspring’s growth, serving as a form of primitive lactation.

    • Carina C. Kern
    • , StJohn Townsend
    •  & David Gems

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Seed banks are generated when individuals enter a dormant state, a phenomenon that has evolved among diverse taxa, but that is also found in stem cells, brains, and tumors. Here, Lennon et al. synthesize the fundamentals of seed-bank theory and the emergence of complex patterns and dynamics in mathematics and the life sciences.

    • Jay T. Lennon
    • , Frank den Hollander
    •  & Jochen Blath

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The virulence of some infectious diseases seems to depend on the sex of the host the infection came from, as well as that of the current host. Here, McLeod et al. develop an epidemiological model to investigate the evolution of virulence when pathogens can retain epigenetic memories of their previous host.

    • David V. McLeod
    • , Geoff Wild
    •  & Francisco Úbeda

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Population structure can influence the probability of and time to fixation of new mutants. Here, Tkadlec et al. demonstrate mathematically that structures that increase fixation probability necessarily slow fixation, but also identify amplifying structures with minimal reductions in fixation time.

    • Josef Tkadlec
    • , Andreas Pavlogiannis
    •  & Martin A. Nowak

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Obscuring knowledge of personal gains from individuals can theoretically maintain fairness in a cooperative group. Experiments show that wild, cooperatively breeding banded mongooses uncertain of kinship allocate postnatal care in a way that reduces inequality among offspring, suggesting a classic idea of moral philosophy can apply in biological systems.

    • H. H. Marshall
    • , R. A. Johnstone
    •  & M. A. Cant

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The ‘invariant rate of ageing’ hypothesis suggests that the rate of ageing tends to be constant within species. Here, Colchero et al. find support for the hypothesis across primates, including humans, suggesting biological constraints on the rate of ageing.

    • Fernando Colchero
    • , José Manuel Aburto
    •  & Susan C. Alberts

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Effective biological engineering requires the acknowledgement of evolution and its consideration during the design process. In this perspective, the authors present the concept of the evotype to reason about and shape the evolutionary potential of natural and engineered biosystems.

    • Simeon D. Castle
    • , Claire S. Grierson
    •  & Thomas E. Gorochowski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Social interaction outcomes can depend on the type of information individuals possess and how it is used in decision-making. Here, Zhou et al. find that self-evaluation based decision-making rules lead to evolutionary outcomes that are robust to different population structures and ways of self-evaluation.

    • Lei Zhou
    • , Bin Wu
    •  & Long Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While there is strong evidence that many mutualisms evolved from antagonism, how or why remains unclear. A study combining theory and a data-based model sheds light on how mutualisms evolve without extremely tight host fidelity and how ecological context affects evolutionary outcomes and vice-versa.

    • Christopher A. Johnson
    • , Gordon P. Smith
    •  & Régis Ferrière

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of multicellular life is hypothesized to have been promoted by rising oxygen levels. Through experimental evolution and modeling, Bozdag et al. demonstrate that our planet’s first oxygenation would have strongly constrained, not promoted, the evolution of multicellular life.

    • G. Ozan Bozdag
    • , Eric Libby
    •  & William C. Ratcliff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A fundamental principle of evolutionary theory is that the force of natural selection is weaker on traits expressed late in life relative to traits expressed early. Here, the authors find strong and consistent patterns of molecular evolution reflecting this principle in four species of animals, including humans.

    • Changde Cheng
    •  & Mark Kirkpatrick

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