Division of Labour and the Evolution of Complexity

Project Information

Division

Grant agreement ID: 834164

DOI

10.3030/834164

Project closed

EC signature date 29 April 2019

Start date 1 January 2020

End date 31 December 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 491 766,00

EU contribution

€ 2 491 766,00

Coordinated by

THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
United Kingdom

CORDIS provides links to public deliverables and publications of HORIZON projects.

Links to deliverables and publications from FP7 projects, as well as links to some specific result types such as dataset and software, are dynamically retrieved from OpenAIRE .

Publications

Peer reviewed articles (38)

The consequences of group structure and efficiency benefits for the evolution of division of labour

Author(s): Guy A. Cooper; Hadleigh Frost; Ming Liu; Stuart A. West
Published in: eLife, Issue 3, 2021, ISSN 2050-084X
Publisher: eLife Sciences Publications
DOI: 10.7554/elife.71968

Equilibria and oscillations in cheat–cooperator dynamics

Author(s): Ming Liu, Geoff Wild, Stuart A West
Published in: Evolution Letters, Issue 7, 2023, Page(s) 339-350, ISSN 2056-3744
Publisher: OUP
DOI: 10.1093/evlett/qrad032

The evolution of manipulative cheating

Author(s): Ming Liu; Stuart A. West; Geoff Wild
Published in: eLife, Issue 1, 2022, ISSN 2050-084X
Publisher: eLife Sciences Publications
DOI: 10.7554/elife.80611

Bacterial lifestyle shapes pangenomes

Author(s): Anna E. Dewar, Chunhui Hao, Laurence J. Belcher, Melanie Ghoul, Stuart A. West
Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Issue 121, 2024, ISSN 0027-8424
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2320170121

Microbial warfare and the evolution of symbiosis

Author(s): Matishalin Patel, Stuart West
Published in: Biology Letters, Issue 18, 2022, ISSN 1744-957X
Publisher: Royal Society
DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2022.0447

Microbial Primer: Cooperation in bacteria

Author(s): Stuart A. West, Ashleigh S. Griffin
Published in: Microbiology, Issue 170, 2024, ISSN 1350-0872
Publisher: Society for General Microbiology
DOI: 10.1099/mic.0.001440

Crozier’s paradox and kin recognition: Insights from simplified models

Author(s): Thomas W. Scott
Published in: Journal of Theoretical Biology, Issue 581, 2025, Page(s) 111735, ISSN 0022-5193
Publisher: Academic Press
DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2024.111735

Host–parasite coevolution and the stability of genetic kin recognition

Author(s): Thomas W. Scott, Alan Grafen, Stuart A. West
Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Issue 120, 2023, ISSN 0027-8424
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2220761120

Cheating leads to the evolution of multipartite viruses

Author(s): Asher Leeks, Penny Grace Young, Paul Eugene Turner, Geoff Wild, Stuart Andrew West
Published in: PLOS Biology, Issue 21, 2023, Page(s) e3002092, ISSN 1545-7885
Publisher: PLoS
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002092

The evolution of mechanisms to produce phenotypic heterogeneity in microorganisms

Author(s): Guy Alexander Cooper; Ming Liu; Jorge Peña; Stuart Andrew West
Published in: Nature Communications, 2022, ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27902-4

Kin-discriminating partner choice promotes the evolution of helping

Author(s): Thomas W Scott, Geoff Wild, Andy Gardner
Published in: Evolution, Issue 79, 2025, Page(s) 962-972, ISSN 0014-3820
Publisher: Society for the Study of Evolution
DOI: 10.1093/evolut/qpaf032

Genes for cooperation are not more likely to be carried by plasmids

Author(s): Anna E. Dewar, Laurence J. Belcher, Thomas W. Scott, Stuart A. West
Published in: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Issue 291, 2024, ISSN 0962-8452
Publisher: Royal Society of London
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.2549

Larger colony sizes favoured the evolution of more worker castes in ants

Author(s): Louis Bell-Roberts, Juliet F. R. Turner, Gijsbert D. A. Werner, Philip A. Downing, Laura Ross, Stuart A. West
Published in: Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2024, ISSN 2397-334X
Publisher: Springer
DOI: 10.1038/s41559-024-02512-7

Replication of experiments and the canonisation of incorrect conclusions

Author(s): Stuart A. West, Maxwell N. Burton-Chellew
Published in: Evolution and Human Behavior, Issue 46, 2026, Page(s) 106749, ISSN 1090-5138
Publisher: Elsevier BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106749

SOCfinder: a genomic tool for identifying social genes in bacteria

Author(s): Laurence J. Belcher, Anna E. Dewar, Chunhui Hao, Zohar Katz, Melanie Ghoul, Stuart A. West
Published in: Microbial Genomics, Issue 9, 2023, ISSN 2057-5858
Publisher: Microbiology Society
DOI: 10.1099/mgen.0.001171

Relatedness and the evolution of mechanisms to divide labor in microorganisms

Author(s): Ming Liu; Stuart A. West; Guy A. Cooper
Published in: Ecology and Evolution, Vol 11, Iss 21, Pp 14475-14489 (2021), Issue 1, 2021, ISSN 2045-7758
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd
DOI: 10.1002/ece3.8067

The evolution of cheating in viruses

Author(s): Asher Leeks; Stuart A. West; Melanie Ghoul
Published in: Nature Communications, 2021, ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27293-6

Symbioses shape feeding niches and diversification across insects

Author(s): Charlie K. Cornwallis, Anouk van ’t Padje, Jacintha Ellers, Malin Klein, Raphaella Jackson, E. Toby Kiers, Stuart A. West, Lee M. Henry
Published in: Nature Ecology & Evolution, Issue 7, 2023, Page(s) 1022-1044, ISSN 2397-334X
Publisher: Springer
DOI: 10.1038/s41559-023-02058-0

Plasmids do not consistently stabilize cooperation across bacteria but may promote broad pathogen host-range

Author(s): Anna E. Dewar; Joshua L. Thomas, Thomas W. Scott; Geoff Wild; Ashleigh S. Griffin; Stuart A. West; Melanie Ghoul
Published in: Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2021, ISSN 2397-334X
Publisher: Springer Nature
DOI: 10.1038/s41559-021-01573-2

Multiple social encounters can eliminate Crozier’s paradox and stabilise genetic kin recognition

Author(s): Thomas W Scott; Alan Grafen; Stuart A West
Published in: Nature Communications, 2022, ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6624184

Altruism and natural selection in a variable environment

Author(s): Miguel dos Santos, Philip A. Downing, Ashleigh S. Griffin, Charlie K. Cornwallis, Stuart A. West
Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Issue 121, 2024, ISSN 0027-8424
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2402974121

Cooperative interactions among females can lead to even more extraordinary sex ratios

Author(s): Ryosuke Iritani, Stuart A. West, Jun Abe
Published in: Evolution Letters, Issue 5, 2023, Page(s) 370-384, ISSN 2056-3744
Publisher: OUP
DOI: 10.1002/evl3.217

The Black Box as a Control for Payoff-Based Learning in Economic Games

Author(s): Maxwell N. Burton-Chellew, Stuart A. West
Published in: Games, Issue 13, 2024, Page(s) 76, ISSN 2073-4336
Publisher: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)
DOI: 10.3390/g13060076

Bacteria encode post-mortem protein catabolism that enables altruistic nutrient recycling

Author(s): Savannah E. R. Gibson, Isabella Frost, Stephen J. Hierons, Tessa Moses, Wilson C. K. Poon, Stuart A. West, Martin J. Cann
Published in: Nature Communications, Issue 16, 2025, ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-56761-6

A phylogenetic approach to comparative genomics

Author(s): Anna E. Dewar, Laurence. J. Belcher, Stuart A. West
Published in: Nature Reviews Genetics, Issue 26, 2025, Page(s) 395-405, ISSN 1471-0056
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
DOI: 10.1038/s41576-024-00803-0

Is cooperation favored by horizontal gene transfer?

Author(s): Thomas W Scott, Stuart A West, Anna E Dewar, Geoff Wild
Published in: Evolution Letters, Issue 7, 2023, Page(s) 113-120, ISSN 2056-3744
Publisher: OUP
DOI: 10.1093/evlett/qrad003

Environmental Predictability in Phylogenetic Comparative Analysis: How to Measure It and Does It Matter?

Author(s): Ming Liu, Louis Bell‐Roberts, Carlos A. Botero, Charlie K. Cornwallis, Stuart A. West
Published in: Global Ecology and Biogeography, Issue 34, 2025, ISSN 1466-822X
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Inc.
DOI: 10.1111/geb.70108

Kin selection for cooperation in natural bacterial populations

Author(s): Laurence J. Belcher; Anna E. Dewar; Melanie Ghoul; Stuart A. West
Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 2022, ISSN 0027-8424
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2119070119

Gene transferability and sociality do not correlate with gene connectivity

Author(s): Chunhui Hao; Anna E. Dewar; Stuart A. West; Melanie Ghoul
Published in: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2022, ISSN 0962-8452
Publisher: Royal Society of London
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.1819

Payoff-based learning best explains the rate of decline in cooperation across 237 public-goods games

Author(s): Maxwell N. Burton-Chellew; Stuart A. West
Published in: Nature Human Behaviour, 2021, ISSN 2397-3374
Publisher: Springer Nature
DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01107-7

Signatures of kin selection in a natural population of the bacteria <i>Bacillus subtilis</i>

Author(s): Laurence J Belcher, Anna E Dewar, Chunhui Hao, Melanie Ghoul, Stuart A West
Published in: Evolution Letters, Issue 7, 2023, Page(s) 315-330, ISSN 2056-3744
Publisher: OUP
DOI: 10.1093/evlett/qrad029

The evolution of signalling and monitoring in plant-fungal networks

Author(s): Thomas W. Scott, E. Toby Kiers, Stuart A. West
Published in: PNAS, 2026, ISSN 0027-8424
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
DOI: 10.1101/2024.08.15.608109

The collapse of cooperation during range expansion of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Author(s): Nan Luo, Jia Lu, Emrah Şimşek, Anita Silver, Yi Yao, Xiaoyi Ouyang, Stuart A. West, Lingchong You
Published in: Nature Microbiology, Issue 9, 2024, Page(s) 1220-1230, ISSN 2058-5276
Publisher: Springer
DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01627-8

Microbial Primer: Cooperation in bacteria.

Author(s): West, S; Griffin, AS
Published in: Microbiology (Reading, England), Issue 11, 2025, ISSN 0026-2617
Publisher: Maik Nauka/Interperiodica Publishing

Ten recent insights for our understanding of cooperation

Author(s): Stuart A. West, Guy A. Cooper, Melanie B. Ghoul, Ashleigh S. Griffin
Published in: Nature Ecology & Evolution, Issue 5/4, 2021, Page(s) 419-430, ISSN 2397-334X
Publisher: Nature
DOI: 10.1038/s41559-020-01384-x

Larger colony sizes favour greater division of labour between queens and workers in ants

Author(s): Juliet Turner, Louis Bell-Roberts, James McCulloch, Matilda Brindle, Rosa Bonifacii, Stuart West
Published in: Evolution, 2025, ISSN 0014-3820
Publisher: Society for the Study of Evolution
DOI: 10.1093/evolut/qpaf250

Using inclusive fitness and eco-evolutionary theory to model cultural evolution

Author(s): Ryosuke Iritani, Stuart A. West
Published in: Evolution and Human Behavior, Issue 46, 2025, Page(s) 106693, ISSN 1090-5138
Publisher: Elsevier BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106693

A comparative approach to the evolution of kissing

Author(s): Matilda Brindle, Catherine F. Talbot, Stuart West
Published in: Evolution and Human Behavior, Issue 47, 2026, Page(s) 106788, ISSN 1090-5138
Publisher: Elsevier BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106788