Social parasites of the smaller kind

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Bacterial colonies of cooperators (green) and cheats (white) growing on agar. Cheats exploit cooperators by stealing their scavenged iron supplies. Credit: Adin Ross-Gillespie
Bacterial colonies of cooperators (green) and cheats (white), growing on agar. Cheats exploit cooperators by stealing their scavenged iron supplies. Credit: Adin Ross-Gillespie

Cooperation is widespread in the natural world but so too are cheats – mutants that do not contribute to the collective good but simply reap the benefits of others’ cooperative efforts. In evolutionary terms, cheats should indeed prosper, so how cooperation persists despite the threat of cheat takeover is a fundamental question. Recently, biologists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford have found that in bacteria, cheats actually orchestrate their own downfall.


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