The importance of spatial heterogeneity and self-restraint on mutualism stability - a quantitative review.

Understanding the factors that enable mutualisms to evolve and to subsequently remain stable over time, is essential to fully understand patterns of global biodiversity and for evidence based conservation policy. Theoretically, spatial heterogeneity of mutualists, through increased likelihood of fidelity between cooperative partners in structured populations, and 'self-restraint' of symbionts, due to selection against high levels of virulence leading to short-term host overexploitation, will result in either a positive correlation between the reproductive success of both mutualists prior to the total exploitation of any host resource or no correlation after any host resource has been fully exploited. A quantitative review by meta-analysis on the results of 96 studies from 35 papers, showed no evidence of a significant fitness correlation between mutualists across a range of systems that captured much taxonomic diversity. However, when the data were split according to four categories of host: 1) cnidarian corals, 2) woody plants, 3) herbaceous plants, and 4) insects, a significantly positive effect in corals was revealed. The trends for the remaining three categories did not significantly differ to zero. Our results suggest that stability in mutualisms requires alternative processes, or mechanisms in addition to, spatial heterogeneity of hosts and/or 'self-restraint' of symbionts.

Non-quantitative adjustment of offspring sex ratios in pollinating fig wasps.

Fig wasp is one of the most well known model systems in examining whether or not the parents could adjust their offspring sex ratio to maximize their gene frequency transmission in next generations. Our manipulative experiments showed that, in all of the five pollinator wasps of figs (Agaonidae) that have different averages of foundress numbers per syconium, almost the same proportions of male offspring are produced in the experiment that foundresses deposit one hour then are killed with ether (66.1%-70.1%) and over the lifespan of each foundress (14.0%-21.0%). The foundresses tend to deposit their male eggs prior to female eggs. The observed increase in the proportion of male offspring as a function of foundress number results from density-dependent interference competition among the foundresses. These results showed that the selection of gene frequency transmission through the behavioral adjustment in the evolution of sex ratio does not exist in these five fig wasps. The results here implied that genetic adjustment mechanisms of the sex ratio of fig wasps can only be triggered to be on or off and that the foundresses can not quantitatively adjust their sex ratio according to increased environmental selection pressure.

Asymmetric interaction paired with a super-rational strategy might resolve the tragedy of the commons without requiring recognition or negotiation.

Avoiding the tragedy of the commons requires that one or more individuals in a group or partnership "volunteer", benefiting the group at a cost to themselves. Recognition and negotiation with social partners can maintain cooperation, but are often not possible. If recognition and negotiation are not always the mechanism by which cooperative partnerships avoid collective tragedies, what might explain the diverse social cooperation observed in nature? Assuming that individuals interact asymmetrically and that both "weak" and "strong" players employ a super-rational strategy, we find that tragedy of the commons can be avoided without requiring either recognition or negotiation. Whereas in the volunteer's dilemma game a rational "strong" player is less likely to volunteer to provide a common good in larger groups, we show that under a wide range of conditions a super-rational "strong" player is more likely to provide a common good. These results imply that the integration of super-rationality and asymmetric interaction might have the potential to resolve the tragedy of the commons. By illuminating the conditions under which players are likely to volunteer, we shed light on the patterns of volunteerism observed in variety of well-studied cooperative social systems, and explore how societies might avert social tragedies.

Evolutionary stability in the asymmetric volunteer's dilemma.

It is often assumed that in public goods games, contributors are either strong or weak players and each individual has an equal probability of exhibiting cooperation. It is difficult to explain why the public good is produced by strong individuals in some cooperation systems, and by weak individuals in others. Viewing the asymmetric volunteer's dilemma game as an evolutionary game, we find that whether the strong or the weak players produce the public good depends on the initial condition (i.e., phenotype or initial strategy of individuals). These different evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS) associated with different initial conditions, can be interpreted as the production modes of public goods of different cooperation systems. A further analysis revealed that the strong player adopts a pure strategy but mixed strategies for the weak players to produce the public good, and that the probability of volunteering by weak players decreases with increasing group size or decreasing cost-benefit ratio. Our model shows that the defection probability of a "strong" player is greater than the "weak" players in the model of Diekmann (1993). This contradicts Selten's (1980) model that public goods can only be produced by a strong player, is not an evolutionarily stable strategy, and will therefore disappear over evolutionary time. Our public good model with ESS has thus extended previous interpretations that the public good can only be produced by strong players in an asymmetric game.

Resource elasticity of offspring survival and the optimal evolution of sex ratios.

The fitness of any organisms includes the survival and reproductive rate of adults and the survival of their offspring. Environmental selection pressures might not affect these two aspects of an organism equally. Assuming that an organism first allocates its limited resources to maintain its survival under environmental selection pressure, our model, based on the evolutionarily stable strategy theory, surprisingly shows that the sex ratio is greatly affected by the environmental pressure intensity and by the reproductive resource elasticity of offspring survival. Moreover, the concept of the resource elasticity of offspring survival intrinsically integrates the ecological concepts of K selection and r selection. The model shows that in a species with reproductive strategy K, increased environmental selection pressure will reduce resource allocation to the male function. By contrast, in a species with reproductive strategy r, harsher environmental selection pressure will increase allocation to the male function. The elasticity of offspring survival might vary not only across species, but also across many other factors affecting the same species (e.g., age structure, spatial heterogeneity), which explains sex ratio differences across species or age structures and spatial heterogeneity in the same species.

[Evolutionary stability analysis of asymmetric hawk-dove game considering the impact of common resource].

Explaining the evolution of cooperation remains one of the important problems in both biology and social science. Classical theories mainly based on an assumption that cooperative players are symmetrically interacted. However, almost all the well-studied systems showed that cooperative players are in fact asymmetrically interacted and that asymmetric interaction might greatly affect cooperation behavior of the involved players. Considering the asymmetric interaction and the selection pressure of resources, we present a model that possesses four strategies: strength- cooperation (SC), strength-defection (SD), weakness-cooperation (WC) and weakness-defection (WD). Combining evolutionary game theory with dynamical stability theory, we find that the evolutionary results closely depend on the asymmetric interaction and selection pressure of resources as well as cost-to-benefit ratio of conflict. When the common resources are plentiful, the cost-to-benefit ratio of conflict is negatively correlated with the probability of SC, while it is positively correlated with the probability of SD and WD. With increasing the strength ratio between the strong and weak players, the proportion of SC and SD will increase, while the proportion of WD will reduce. The model developed here has intrinsically integrated Boxed Pigs game and Hawk-Dove game. When the common resource is at shortage, the Boxed Pigs game will transform into Hawk-Dove game under the increase of the strength ratio between the strong and weak players.

Therapeutic effect of secretive endostatin eukaryotic expressing plasmid on mouse hepatoma / 中华肝脏病杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To construct and express secretive endostatin eukaryotic plasmid for treatment of hepatoma.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Mouse Igk signal peptide sequence was synthesized and cloned into pcDNA3.1 with endostatin gene. The supernant of BHK-21 transfected with recombinant was used to culture ECV304. The proliferation of latter was evaluated by MTT assay. H22 was inoculated intramusclely, then naked DNA of endostatin plasmid was injected into the inoculation site. Tumors were dissected and weighted after treatments. All data was analyzed by SPSS10.0.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The supernant of BHK-21 transfected with recombinant can inhibit the proliferation of ECV304 by 29.2%. Tumor weight lighter after injected with naked pSecES (1.34 g+/-0.96g) compared with naked pcDNA3.1 (2.70g+/-0.82g) and saline (3.73g+/-1.41g).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The endostatin eukaryotic plasmid was constructed and it can be used for gene therapy on hepatoma.</p>