Data from: Spite and the scale of competition in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Scale of competition has been shown to be an important factor in shaping the evolution of the social interactions. Although many theoretical and experimental studies have examined its impact upon altruistic cooperation, relatively little research effort has been focused upon spiteful behaviours: actions that harm both the actor and recipient. In this study, we expand upon the existing theory by investigating the importance of global frequency of spiteful alleles, and we determine experimentally how scale of competition affects selection for spite in the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, under high and intermediate spatial relatedness. Consistent with our theoretical results, we find in our experiments that spiteful genotypes are more favoured under local (rather than global) competition and intermediate (rather than high) spatial relatedness; conditions that have been shown to select against indiscriminate altruism.竞争规模已被证实是塑造社会互动演化的关键因素之一。尽管已有诸多理论与实验研究探讨了竞争规模对利他合作的影响，但针对恶意行为（spiteful behaviours）——即同时损害行为者与接收者的行为——的相关研究仍相对匮乏。本研究通过探究恶意等位基因（spiteful alleles）的全局频率的重要性，拓展了现有理论框架；并通过实验明确了在高与中等空间亲缘度条件下，竞争规模如何影响细菌性病原体铜绿假单胞菌（Pseudomonas aeruginosa）中的恶意行为选择压力。与本研究的理论结果一致，实验发现恶意基因型在局部竞争（而非全局竞争）以及中等空间亲缘度（而非高空间亲缘度）条件下更受选择青睐；这类条件已被证实会抑制无差别利他行为的演化。