Evolution of multicellular life cycles under costly fragmentation

Abstract

A fascinating wealth of life cycles is observed in biology, from unicellularity to the concerted fragmentation of multicellular units. However, the understanding of factors driving their evolution is still limited. We show that costs of fragmentation have a major impact on the evolution of life cycles due to their influence on the growth rates of the associated populations. We model a group structured population of undifferentiated cells, where cell clusters reproduce by fragmentation. Fragmentation events are associated with a cost expressed by either a fragmentation delay, an additional risk, or a cell loss. The introduction of such fragmentation costs vastly increases the set of possible life cycles. Based on these findings, we suggest that the evolution of life cycles involving splitting into multiple offspring can be directly associated with the fragmentation cost. Moreover, the impact of this cost alone is strong enough to drive the emergence of multicellular units that eventually split into many single cells, even under scenarios that strongly disfavour collectives compared to solitary individuals.