©Adin Ross-Gillespie |
Bacterial colonies of cooperators (green) and cheats (white), growing on agar. Cheats exploit cooperators by stealing their scavenged iron supplies. |
In the study, reported in the September issue of The American Naturalist, the team explored the impact of cheats in populations of the notorious pathogen, Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These bacteria cooperate to scavenge iron from their environment, but mutant cheats do not contribute their fair share of scavenger molecules and instead simply steal the iron supplies of others.
"Cheats are kept in check by simple frequency dependence," says Adin Ross-Gillespie, lead author of the study. "When rare, cheats prosper at the expense of cooperators, but as they become more common, the profitability of their strategy declines. At equilibrium, neither strategy has the upper hand, so the two coexist."
But, the authors note, this pattern arises only under certain conditions. In this case, it arose because population productivity, too, was sensitive to the frequency of cheats. Cultures with few cheats grew rapidly and achieved larger absolute sizes in the time available, providing greater opportunity for cheats to exploit the situation. Meanwhile, cultures comprising high proportions of cheats grew poorly. "Too many cheats spoil the broth," quips Ross-Gillespie.
Microbes cooperate extensively, and their social activities often have profound medical or economic importance. Studies such as this help us to better understand how cooperative traits evolve and persist. Who knows" Perhaps some day we will harness the power of cheats to direct the dynamics of bacterial populations.
"Pathocrats’ achievement of absolute domination in the government of a country ...has nowhere to go but down. Any leadership position, (down to village headman and community cooperative managers, not to mention the directors of police units, and special-services police personnel, and activists in the pathocratic party) must be filled by individuals [who are also pathological deviants]. [Such people are] more valuable because they constitute a very small percentage of the population. Their intellectual level or professional skills cannot be taken into account, since people [with] superior abilities [who are also deviants] are even harder to find.
After such a system has lasted several years, one hundred percent of all the cases of essential psychopathy are involved in pathocratic activity; they are considered the most loyal, even though some of them were formerly involved on the other side in some way.
Under such conditions, no area of social life can develop normally, whether in economics, culture, science, technology, administration, etc.
Pathocracy progressively paralyzes everything. ... pathocracy progressively intrudes everywhere and dulls everything. [...]
If such and many managerial positions are assumed by individuals deprived of sufficient abilities to feel and understand most other people, and who also betray deficiencies in technical imagination and practical skills—(faculties indispensable for governing economic and political matters) this must result in an exceptionally serious crisis in all areas, both within the country in question and with regard to international relations. Within, the situation shall become unbearable even for those citizens who were able to feather their nest into a relatively comfortable modus vivendi. [...]
Goaded by their character, [deviants] thirst for [such domination] even though it conflicts with their own life interest... They do not understand that a catastrophe [will follow]. Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.
(Andrzej Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology [Link]
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