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Fig. 4 | BMC Ecology and Evolution

Fig. 4

From: The role of the ecological scaffold in the origin and maintenance of whole-group trait altruism in microbial populations

Fig. 4

Without dispersal the metapopulation reaches a dynamic equilibrium when \({R}_{in}=5\). The bubble plot depicts the \(7\times 7\) grid of the metapopulation after \(1\times {10}^{6}\) generations without dispersal. Bubbles indicate the spatial location of groups. The proportion of A-types in a group is represented by hue, with \(\pi =0\) (an S-type group) indicated in white and \(\pi =1\) (an A-type group) in black. Bubble diameter is proportional to the logarithm of group size. Dots indicate places where stochastic birth–death processes caused a group to go extinct. The line plot shows how the number of A-type cells in the metapopulation evolved over time by mutation and drift starting from zero. The metapopulation gradually approaches a dynamic equilibrium in the number of A-type groups

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