Since Hamilton published his seminal papers in 1964, our understanding of the importance
of cooperation for life on Earth has evolved beyond recognition. Early research was focused …

Cheaters—genotypes that gain a selective advantage by taking the benefits of the social
contributions of others while avoiding the costs of cooperating—are thought to pose a major …

Social evolution in honey bees has produced strong queen–worker dimorphism for plastic
traits that depend on larval nutrition. The honey bee developmental programme includes …

It is widely established that proteins involved in reproduction diverge between species more
quickly than other proteins. For male sperm proteins, rapid divergence is believed to be …

Simple Summary Fungus-growing termites cultivate monocultures of a specific fungi (of a
genus called Termitomyces) for food in their colony, analogously to human farmers growing …

All organisms live in clusters, but such fractured local populations, or demes, nonetheless
maintain connectivity with one another by some amount of gene flow between them. Most …

Efficient host control predicts the extirpation of ineffective symbionts, but they are
nonetheless widespread in nature. We tested three hypotheses for the maintenance of …

Cooperative organisms evolve within socially diverse populations. In populations harboring
both cooperators and cheaters, cooperators might adapt by evolving novel interactions with …

Pleiotropy has been suggested as a novel mechanism for stabilising cooperation in bacteria
and other microbes. The hypothesis is that linking cooperation with a trait that provides a …

Background The stability of cooperative interactions among different species can be
compromised by cheating. In the plant-mycorrhizal fungi symbiosis, a single mycorrhizal …