On extreme altruistic behaviour

The paper “Evolution of suicide as a defence strategy against pathogens in a spatially structured environment” is about bacteria, but plant populations can also be spatially structured. Probably plants do not commit suicide, but it would be worthwhile looking at other possible altruistic types of behaviour in plants within the context of this analysis. The paper is at

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12064/abstract

A related paper “Altruism can evolve when relatedness is low: evidence from bacteria committing suicide upon phage infection.”  This paper is available at

 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1759/20123035

Maybe these papers could be discussed in a future journal club.

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