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. 2013 Aug 20;9:684. doi: 10.1038/msb.2013.42

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Copyright © 2013, EMBO and Macmillan Publishers Limited

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. To view a copy of this licence visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

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Individual-level selection disfavors cooperation: induced cooperators increase population size but lose to defectors. (A) Competitions between cooperators and defectors mixed at varying mixing proportions (L-arabinose 0.25%). Cooperators are labeled with GFP (green) and defectors are labeled with DsRed-Express (red). (B) The change in cooperator proportion due to competition reveals that induced cooperation is strongly selected against. Lines represent best fit for mathematical model (see Materials and methods) and shaded areas represent confidence levels from bootstrapping. Size of data points is proportional to the weight of the data point in the parameter fitting. (C) Colony fitness increases with the proportion of cooperators but shows diminishing returns. (D) The growth yield of cooperators relative to the yield of defectors decreases with increasing levels of biosurfactant induction. Error bars represent minimum and maximum parameter value obtained from bootstrapping.