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Evolutionary biology

Cooperation can be dangerous

Nature volume 408, pages 917–919 (2000)Cite this article

In social situations, opportunities arise for some individuals to take advantage of others. This happens in wild populations of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum.

Most of the organisms studied by developmental biologists — the fruitfly Drosophila, for instance — arise from a fertilized egg. So, apart from the mature reproductive cells, the cells from which these organisms are made are genetically identical. No cell has a genetic advantage over the others, and any variants that do arise are excluded from the germ line. Because of the lack of genetic diversity among their cells and the presence of a germ line, cheating by individual cells is restricted in most multicellular organisms.

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Figure 1: Cheaters in the Dictyostelium life cycle.

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  1. Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Columbia University, 630 West 168th Street , New York, 10032, New York, USA

    Richard H. Kessin

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  1. Richard H. Kessin
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Correspondence to Richard H. Kessin.

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Kessin, R. Cooperation can be dangerous. Nature 408, 917–919 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35050184

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