Microorganisms engage in a wide variety of social interactions, including cooperation. A cooperative behavior is one that benefits an individual (the recipient) other than the one performing the behavior (the actor). This article outlines the various forms of cooperative interactions (mutualism and altruism) seen in microbial systems, as well as the benefits that might have driven the evolution of these complex behaviors.
Introduction Microorganisms, or microbes, span all three domains of life – bacteria, archaea, and many unicellular eukaryotes including some fungi and protists. Typically defined as unicellular life forms that can only be observed with a microscope, microorganisms were the first cellular life forms, and were critical for creating the conditions for the evolution of more complex multicellular forms.
Although microbes are too small to see with the naked eye, they represent the overwhelming majority of biological diversity, and thus serve as an excellent system to study evolutionary questions. One such topic that scientists have examined in microbes is the evolution of social behaviors, including cooperation. A cooperative interaction benefits a recipient, and is selected for on that basis. In microbial systems, cells belonging to the same taxa have been documented partaking in cooperative interactions to perform a wide range of complex multicellular behaviors such as dispersal, foraging, construction of biofilms, reproduction, chemical warfare, and signaling. This article will outline the various forms of cooperative interactions seen in microbial systems, as well as the benefits that might have driven the evolution of these complex behaviors.
History + Table 1: Hamilton's classification of the four types of social behaviors. Effect on recipient + − Effect on actor + Mutual benefit Selfishness − Altruism Spite From an evolutionary point of view, a behavior is social if it has fitness consequences for both the individual that performs that behavior (the actor) and another individual (the recipient). Hamilton first categorized social behaviors according to whether the consequences they entail for the actor and recipient are beneficial (increase direct fitness) or costly (decrease direct fitness). Based on Hamilton's definition, there are four unique types of social interactions: mutualism (+/+), selfishness (+/−), altruism (−/+), and spite (−/−) (Table 1). Mutualism and altruism are considered cooperative interactions because they are beneficial to the recipient, and will be the focus of this article.
Explaining cooperation remains one of the greatest challenges for evolutionary biology, regardless of whether the behavior is considered mutually beneficial or altruistic. According to classical evolutionary theory, an organism will only behave in ways that maximize its own fitness. Therefore, the origin of cooperative interactions, or actions by individuals that result in other individuals receiving fitness benefits, seems counterintuitive.
Theoretical explanations for the evolution of cooperation can be broadly classified into two categories: direct fitness benefits or indirect fitness benefits. This follows from Hamilton's 1964 insight that individuals gain inclusive fitness directly through their impact on their own reproduction (direct fitness effects), as well as through their impact on the reproduction of individuals with related genes (indirect fitness effects).
Types of cooperation
Mutualism
Perhaps the most common cooperative interactions seen in microbial systems are mutually beneficial. Mutually beneficial social interactions provide a direct fitness benefit to both individuals involved, while outweighing any cost of performing the behaviour. In an environment with individual microbes, mutualism is most often performed in order to increase individual fitness benefit. However, in a community, microorganisms will interact on a large scale to allow for the persistence of the population, which will thereby increase their own fitness.
The majority of the time, organisms partaking in these behaviours have a shared interest in cooperation. In microbial systems, this is often seen in the production of metabolically expensive molecules, known as public goods. Many microbes, especially bacteria, produce numerous public goods that are released into the extracellular environment. The diffusion that occurs allows for them to be used by neighbouring organisms, despite being produced for the individual.
One very popular example of mutually beneficial microbial interactions involves the production of siderophores. Siderophores are iron-scavenging molecules produced by many microbial taxa, including bacteria and fungi. These molecules are known as chelating agents and play an important role in facilitating the uptake and metabolism of iron in the environment, as it normally exists in an insoluble form. In order for bacteria to access this limiting factor, cells will manufacture these molecules, and then secrete them into the extracellular space. Once released, the siderophores will sequester the iron, and form a complex, which is recognized by bacterial cell receptors. It can then be transported into the cell and reduced, making the iron metabolically accessible for the bacteria. The production of siderophores is often used as an example of mutualism as the compounds are not constricted to individual usage. As long as the organism possesses a receptor for the siderophore-Fe (III) complex, they can be taken up and utilized.
There are many explanations in place that justify the evolution of mutually beneficial interactions. Most importantly, in order for the production of public goods to be evolutionarily beneficial, the behaviour must provide a direct benefit to the reproductive performance of the actor that outweighs the cost of performing the behaviour. This is most often seen in the case of direct fitness benefit. As bacteria are most often found in colonies, neighbouring bacteria are likely to express genetic commonality. Therefore, by increasing the chances for a nearby bacterium to grow and divide, the host is increasing their own passage of genetic material. In the case of siderophores, a positive correlation was found between relatedness among bacterial lineages and siderophore production.
Microbial communities are not only interested in the survival and productivity of their own species, however. In a mixed community, different bacterial species have been found to adapt to different food sources, including the waste products of other species, in order to stave off unnecessary competition. This allows heightened efficiency for the community as a whole.
Having a balanced community is very important for microbial success. In the case of siderophore production, there must be equilibrium between the microbes that spend their energy to produce the chelating agents, and those that can utilize xenosiderophores. Otherwise, the exploitative microbes would eventually out-compete the producers, leaving a community with no organisms able to produce siderophores, and thus, unable to survive in low iron conditions. This ability to balance between the two populations is currently being researched. It is thought to be due to the presence of low-affinity receptors on the non-producers, or producers generating a toxin-mediated interference mechanism.
While the production of public goods aims to benefit all individuals, it also leads to the evolution of cheaters, or individuals that do not pay the cost of producing a good, but still receive benefits (Figure 1). In order to minimize fitness costs, natural selection will favor individuals that do not to secrete while taking advantage of the secretions of their neighbors. In a population of siderophore secreting cells, non-secreting mutant cells do not pay the cost of secretion, but still gain the same benefit as the wild-type neighbors. Recently, Griffin et al. (2004) investigated the social nature of the production of siderophores in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. When cells were grown in pure culture were placed in an iron-limiting environment, populations of cells that secreted siderophores (wild-type) outcompeted a population of mutant non-secretors. Therefore, siderophore production is beneficial when iron is limiting. However, when the same populations were placed in an iron-rich environment, the mutant population outcompeted wild-type population, demonstrating that siderophore production is metabolically costly. Finally, when both wild type and mutant bacteria were placed in the same mixed population, the mutants can gain the benefit of siderophore production without paying the cost, and hence increase in frequency. This concept is commonly referred to the tragedy of the commons.
The prisoner's dilemma game is another way that evolutionary biologists explain the presence of cheating in cooperative microbial systems. Originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher in 1950, the Prisoner's Dilemma is a fundamental problem in game theory, and demonstrates that two individuals might not cooperate even if it is in both their best interests to do so. In the dilemma, two individuals each choose whether to cooperate with the other individual or to cheat. Cooperation by both individuals gives the greatest average advantage. However, if one individual decides to cheat, they will obtain a greater individual advantage. If the game is played only once cheating is the superior strategy since it is the superior strategy. However, in biologically realistic situations, with repeated interactions (games), mutations, and heterogeneous environments, there is often no single stable solution and the success of individual strategies can vary in endless periodic or chaotic cycles. The specific solution to the game will depend critically on the way iterations are implemented and how pay-offs are translated to population and community dynamics.
In the bacteria Escherichia coli, a Prisoner Dilemma situation can be observed when mutants exhibiting a Grow Advantage in Stationary Phase (GASP) phenotype compete with a wild type (WT) strain in batch culture. In such batch culture settings, where the growth environment is homogenized by shaking the cultures, WT cells cooperate by arresting bacterial growth in order to prevent ecological collapse while the GASP mutants continue to grow by defecting to the wild type regulatory mechanism. As a consequence of such defection to the self-regulation of growth by the GASP cells, although higher cell densities are achieved in the short term, a population collapse is attained in the long run due to the tragedy of the commons (Figure 1). On the contrary, although WT cells do not achieve such high population densities, their populations are sustainable at the same density in the long term. As predicted by theory, in a spatial setting such as those implemented experimentally by microfluidics chips, coexistence between the two strains is possible due to the localization of interactions and the spatial segregation of cheaters. When provided with such a spatial environment, bacteria can self-organize into dynamic patterns of cell aggregation, desegregation which ensure that cooperator WT cells can reap the benefits of cooperation (Figure 2).