Key Publications

Non Adaptive Incompatibilities in Aggregative Multicellularity

developmental incompatibilities

multicellularity

aggregation

complexity

dictyostelium

This paper shows that developmental incompatibilities may evolve readily but their fitness costs may be dependent on whether selection favors migration or producing more spores

Reduced social function in experimentally evolved Dictyostelium discoideum implies selection for social conflict in nature

We tested whether cheating is adaptive in social amoeba in the wild. Published in Proc. Roy. Soc. B, 2023.

social evolution

multicellularity

relaxed selection

experimental evolution

dictyostelium

This paper shows that Dictyostelium discoideum is under selection for cheating in nature using experimentally evolved lineages that were grown under relaxed selection for sociality

11 December 2023

Group maintenance in aggregative multicellularity

This paper was published as a chapter in the book Evolution of Multicellularity edited by Matthew Herron, Peter Conlin, and William Ratcliff.

multicellularity

social evolution

myxococcus

dictyostelium

major transitions

We showed that aggregative organisms and clonal organisms are quite alike because of active and passive cheating control mechanisms.