Plants emit biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) as signaling molecules, playing a crucial role in inducing resistance against herbivores. Neighboring plants that eavesdrop on BVOC signals can also increase defenses against herbivores or alter growth patterns to respond to potential risks of herbivore damage. Despite the significance of BVOC emissions, the evolutionary rationales behind their release and the factors contributing to the diversity in such emissions remain poorly understood. To unravel the conditions for the evolution of BVOC emission, we developed a spatially explicit model that formalizes the evolutionary dynamics of BVOC emission and non-emission strategies. Our model considered two effects of BVOC signaling that impact the fitness of plants: intra-individual communication, which mitigates herbivore damage through the plant\'s own BVOC signaling incurring emission costs, and inter-individual communication, which alters the influence of herbivory based on BVOC signals from other individuals without incurring emission costs. Employing two mathematical models-the lattice model and the random distribution model-we investigated how intra-individual communication, inter-individual communication, and spatial structure influenced the evolution of BVOC emission strategies. Our analysis revealed that the increase in intra-individual communication promotes the evolution of the BVOC emission strategy. In contrast, the increase in inter-individual communication effect favors cheaters who benefit from the BVOCs released from neighboring plants without bearing the costs associated with BVOC emission. Our analysis also demonstrated that the narrower the spatial scale of BVOC signaling, the higher the likelihood of BVOC evolution. This research sheds light on the intricate dynamics governing the evolution of BVOC emissions and their implications for plant-plant communication.

To start with an infinitely repeated game of supply chains of public goods, a stout reciprocity mechanism is introduced into income games to build a matric dynamic equation. The conventional evolutionary game method is employed to propose a model called the evolutionary game for the cooperative strategy of both the manufacturer and the seller groups in the supply chain of public goods. Also, white Gaussian noise (WGN) is added to reflect random interference in the evolution process. Then, a stochastic dynamic system is established, and Ito\'s differential equation is used to analyze both sides\' strategy evolution in a game, interpret changes in system stability when random disturbance is added, and finally test the influence of different situations on the system stability by running a numerical simulation. The research shows that the stronger the reciprocity coefficient is, and the system is subjected to random interference, the greater the strategy choice change in players\' decision-making procedures when the repeated game of public goods is conducted.

We propose a new methodology to systematically transform presurveyed argument preferences into fictional narratives, that can help people to imagine the consequences of future events, and measure how they impact willingness to pay for a public policy. We apply narrative theory to construct two short narratives that depict an imaginary future, bleak due to climate change or energy dependence, and show experimentally that exposure to these narratives increases contributions in a Public Goods game, framed as payments toward the construction of new nuclear plant in The Netherlands. Our results suggest that fictional narratives can be used (and misused) as a tool of economic policy that allows conveying relevant information to people about complex issues. We discuss the ethical use of narratives and the value of their transparent construction for democratic will-formation and policy implementation when abstract factual information can be difficult to process or comprehend.

Traditional analysis takes the public or private nature of goods as given. However, technological advances, particularly related to digital goods such as non-fungible tokens, increasingly make rivalry a choice variable of the designer. This paper addresses the question of when a profit-maximizing seller prefers to provide an asset as a private good or as a public good. While the public good is subject to a free-rider problem, a profit-maximizing seller or designer faces a nontrivial quantity-exclusivity tradeoff, and so profits from collecting small payments from multiple agents can exceed the large payment from a single agent. We provide conditions under which the profit from the public good exceeds that from a private good. If the cost of production is sufficiently, but not excessively, large, then production is profitable only for the public good. Moreover, if the lower bound of the support of the buyers\' value distribution is positive, then the profit from the public good is unbounded in the number of buyers, whereas the profit from selling the private good is never more than the upper bound of the support minus the cost. As the variance of the agents\' distribution becomes smaller, public goods eventually outperform private goods, reflecting intuition based on complete information models, in which public goods always outperform private goods in terms of revenue.

Individuals\' endorsement of standards of civic honesty is necessary for democracies to flourish. A critical driver of civic honesty is the relationship of trust between individuals and institutions. Research has yet to systematically assess the contextual factors that may moderate this relationship. In this study, we examined the societal influence of organized criminal groups. Criminal groups operate as alternative systems of authority that erode the reliability of institutions\' moral standards. We employed a new indicator that quantifies their societal influence to test the hypothesis that the association between individuals\' political trust and civic honesty would weaken in countries more strongly affected by criminal groups. Multilevel evidence across 83 representative national samples (N = 128,839) supported this hypothesis. Moreover, the association between political trust and civic honesty was negative in contexts where criminal groups\' influence was more extreme. We discuss the implications of the findings and future research directions.

It has been nearly a century since the isolation and use of penicillin, heralding the discovery of a wide range of different antibiotics. In addition to clinical applications, such antibiotics have been essential laboratory tools, allowing for selection and maintenance of laboratory plasmids that encode cognate resistance genes. However, antibiotic resistance mechanisms can additionally function as public goods. For example, extracellular beta-lactamases produced by resistant cells that subsequently degrade penicillin and related antibiotics allow neighboring plasmid-free susceptible bacteria to survive antibiotic treatment. How such cooperative mechanisms impact selection of plasmids during experiments in laboratory conditions is poorly understood. Here, we show in multiple bacterial species that the use of plasmid-encoded beta-lactamases leads to significant curing of plasmids in surface-grown bacteria. Furthermore, such curing was also evident for aminoglycoside phosphotransferase and tetracycline antiporter resistance mechanisms. Alternatively, antibiotic selection in liquid growth led to more robust plasmid maintenance, although plasmid loss was still observed. The net outcome of such plasmid loss is the generation of a heterogenous population of plasmid-containing and plasmid-free cells, leading to experimental confounds that are not widely appreciated.IMPORTANCEPlasmids are routinely used in microbiology as readouts of cell biology or tools to manipulate cell function. Central to these studies is the assumption that all cells in an experiment contain the plasmid. Plasmid maintenance in a host cell typically depends on a plasmid-encoded antibiotic resistance marker, which provides a selective advantage when the plasmid-containing cell is grown in the presence of antibiotic. Here, we find that growth of plasmid-containing bacteria on a surface and to a lesser extent in liquid culture in the presence of three distinct antibiotic families leads to the evolution of a significant number of plasmid-free cells, which rely on the resistance mechanisms of the plasmid-containing cells. This process generates a heterogenous population of plasmid-free and plasmid-containing bacteria, an outcome which could confound further experimentation.

Ecological dependencies - where organisms rely on other organisms for survival - are a ubiquitous feature of life on earth. Multicellular hosts rely on symbionts to provide essential vitamins and amino acids. Legume plants similarly rely on nitrogen-fixing rhizobia to convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia. In some cases, dependencies can arise via loss-of-function mutations that allow one partner to benefit from the actions of another. It is common in microbiology to label ecological dependencies between species as cooperation - making it necessary to invoke cooperation-specific frameworks to explain the phenomenon. However, in many cases, such traits are not (at least initially) cooperative, because they are not selected for because of the benefits they confer on a partner species. In contrast, dependencies in microbial communities may originate from fitness benefits gained from genomic-streamlining (i.e. Black Queen Dynamics). Here, we outline how the Black Queen Hypothesis predicts the formation of metabolic dependencies via loss-of-function mutations in microbial communities, without needing to invoke any cooperation-specific explanations. Furthermore we outline how the Black Queen Hypothesis can act as a blueprint for true cooperation as well as discuss key outstanding questions in the field. The nature of interactions in microbial communities can predict the ability of natural communities to withstand and recover from disturbances. Hence, it is vital to gain a deeper understanding of the factors driving these dynamic interactions over evolutionary time.

European agricultural policies increasingly incorporate mechanisms for delivery of public goods. Sustainable public good delivery requires alignment between societal demand and landscape supply. However, the variation of demands or desires regarding future public good delivery among society is hardly known. We inventoried the desires for public goods across Dutch society, and projections of agricultural supply. A multi-method approach was used to find agreement levels between desired and expected change in good delivery. Most stakeholders expressed a desire for biodiversity and climate regulation from agriculture, whilst desire for natural heritage and recreation was less common. The utility of a public good to a stakeholder appears to influence its desire. Scenarios for agriculture focus on extensification, sustainable intensification, regionalization, or meadow bird conservation. Regionalized scenarios showed the highest agreement between public good supply and desire. Maximizing alignment between desire and supply thus requires a challenging transition towards region-specific agricultural sustainability strategies.

Duplication is a major route for the emergence of new gene functions. However, the emergence of new gene functions via this route may be reduced in prokaryotes, as redundant genes are often rapidly purged. In lineages with compact, streamlined genomes, it thus appears challenging for novel function to emerge via duplication and divergence. A further pressure contributing to gene loss occurs under Black Queen dynamics, as cheaters that lose the capacity to produce a public good can instead acquire it from neighbouring producers. We propose that Black Queen dynamics can favour the emergence of new function because, under an emerging Black Queen dynamic, there is high gene redundancy spread across a community of interacting cells. Using computational modelling, we demonstrate that new gene functions can emerge under Black Queen dynamics. This result holds even if there is deletion bias due to low duplication rates and selection against redundant gene copies resulting from the high cost associated with carrying a locus. However, when the public good production costs are high, Black Queen dynamics impede the fixation of new functions. Our results expand the mechanisms by which new gene functions can emerge in prokaryotic systems.

Offshore wind development is in its nascent stages in the United States. Recent research indicates that the visual impacts of offshore wind farms are viewed negatively by the general population. This North Carolina application is the first US-focused discrete choice experiment that explicitly asks respondents to consider the positive local and global benefits from offshore wind development, such as job creation and greenhouse gas emission reductions, simultaneously with their visual impacts. We find significant willingness to pay (WTP) for reducing the visual impacts of offshore wind farms, and that the extent of disamenity varies in the population and with placement along developed tourist towns (as much as $783/year for three years) or preserved coastlines (as much as $451/year for three years). We also find that some preference classes value projects that create permanent jobs and reduce carbon emissions. We use our estimates of preferences for the positive and negative attributes to explore specific wind farm configurations and locations that could achieve positive consensus in a heterogenous population.