Question

Please write about these questions like a small paragraph answering he questions below:

Do you think that microbes can have cooperative traits? Why or why not?

Think about the RNA viruses that evolve as if they were playing the prisoner's dilemma game. What if you did not know about the prisoner's dilemma and you were given the data on fitness at different starting frequencies in the paper presented. How would you interpret those results? Is it useful to think about the data by thinking about the prisoner's dilemma? If this was a virus infecting a human, would you hope that the viruses defect or cooperate? Why? What might you do to try to encourage defection?What is the difference between group and individual selection? Do you think natural selection operates at the level of a group? Why? Why do some scientists think that is problematic? What is kin selection, and how is it expected to affect the persistence of cooperative traits?

How does spatial structure affect the stability of cooperation?

Answer 1

Yes, microbes can have cooperative traits. This is because there are many ways in which microbes communicate with each other and benefit. Some of the ways in which cooperative traits of microbes can be observed are mutualism, altruism and quorum sensing. Though quorum sensing is used for communication purpose only but it shows that there is social interaction among microbes. Mutualism is when both the individuals benefit and altruism where the recipient benefits but the actor does not.

Without knowing about the prisoner's dilemma the interpretation of the results would have been different. Quantitative and qualitative observation would have taken precedence over considering any kind of social behavior being involved.

Yes, it is very useful to think about the data along with knowing about prisoner's dilemma. The short term and long term results could have been predicted theoretically.

Being a human I would hope that the virus defects. This is because any kind of virus in the body causes health complications and since it is evolving in nature it may become difficult to find a cure for the same.