Cooperation and conflict in quorum-sensing bacterial populations
TL;DR
Cheater mutants can invade quorum-sensing populations
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This paper applied evolutionary game theory to quorum sensing, demonstrating that cheaters (bacteria that don't produce autoinducers but benefit from neighbors' production) can invade populations but are frequency-dependent - successful only when rare.
The findings have direct implications for understanding cooperation in any collective action problem: free-riding is possible but self-limiting when collective action is necessary for benefits to materialize.
Key Findings from Diggle et al. (2007)
- Cheater mutants can invade quorum-sensing populations
- Cheaters are frequency-dependent - successful only when rare
- If cheaters become too common, quorum is never reached and all suffer
- Private goods (like siderophores) are less vulnerable to cheating than public goods