The ethics of care and the tragedy of the commons

AbstractPlasmids are autonomous genetic elements that can be exchanged between microorganisms via horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Despite the central role they play in antibiotic resistance and modern biotechnology, our understanding of plasmids’ natural ecology is limited. Recent experiments have shown that plasmids can spread even when they are a burden to the cell, suggesting that natural plasmids may exist as parasites. Here, we use mathematical modeling to explore the ecology of such parasitic plasmids. We first develop models of single plasmids and find that a plasmid’s population dynamics and optimal infection strategy are strongly determined by the plasmid’s HGT mechanism. We then analyze models of co-infecting plasmids and show that parasitic plasmids are prone to a “tragedy of the commons” in which runaway plasmid invasion severely reduces host fitness. We propose that this tragedy of the commons is averted by selection between competing populations and demonstrate this effect in a metapopulation model. We derive predicted distributions of unique plasmid types in genomes—comparison to the distribution of plasmids in a collection of 17,725 genomes supports a model of parasitic plasmids with positive plasmid–plasmid interactions that ameliorate plasmid fitness costs or promote the invasion of new plasmids.

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The tragedy of the commons and socialization: Theory and policy

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management ◽

10.1016/j.jeem.2019.102260 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 98 ◽

pp. 102260 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Emeline Bezin ◽

Gregory Ponthière

Keyword(s):

Tragedy Of The Commons ◽

Socialization Theory ◽

The Commons

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Everybody loses: intraspecific competition induces tragedy of the commons in Allenby's gerbils

Ecology ◽

10.1890/14-0130.1 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 96 (1) ◽

pp. 54-61 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Oded Berger-Tal ◽

Keren Embar ◽

Burt P. Kotler ◽

David Saltz

Keyword(s):

Intraspecific Competition ◽

Tragedy Of The Commons ◽

The Commons

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The Evolution of Morality

PARADIGMI ◽

10.3280/para2012-001010 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 173-196

Author(s):

Stephan White

Keyword(s):

Social Institutions ◽

Tragedy Of The Commons ◽

Evolution Of Morality ◽

Morality Plays ◽

The Face ◽

The Commons ◽

One Step

It seems clear that cooperation when cheating would go undetected - for example, in many-person prisoner's dilemmas or "tragedy of the commons" cases - is a precondition of the functioning of modern social institutions. Such cooperation seems difficult to explain in evolutionary terms, however, since those who are disposed to cheat seem to enjoy a systematic advantage relative to those who are not. Further- more, the appeal to mechanisms for the detection and punishment of noncooperation, since those mechanisms themselves presuppose cooperation, merely pushes the problem one step back. In this paper I argue that morality plays an ineliminable role in the explanation of the forms of cooperation in question. Moreover, I provide a schema for the evolution of morality in the face of the advantages that those disposed to cheat apparently enjoy.

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