Lixing Sun is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Central Washington University. His new book, The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars, is available from Princeton University Press. He is also the author of The Fairness Instinct: The Robin Hood Mentality and Our Biological Nature and the coauthor of The Beaver: Natural History of a Wetlands Engineer.
Cheating is found in all domains of life, at every level of the biological hierarchy, from the most complex organisms to the least sophisticated, even incomplete, forms of life. It is found among animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, viruses, chromosomes, genes, and snippets of DNA. It occurs within the same individual, between individuals of the same species, and between species that are vastly different in form and function.
If you think the man's choice is foolish, congratulations! You've just saved the life of Socrates, the Greek philosopher who chose death over breaching the trust between a citizen and the state. How likely is it that we would find a heroic martyr, willing to die for the sake of trust and honesty, in the natural world? Extremely unlikely — in fact, no known examples exist. On the contrary, we find that cheating is ubiquitous in nature at all levels.
Intrigued by the complex strategies emerging from the evolutionary game played by rhizobia and plants? This is just a simple case to illustrate how cheating can trigger an evolutionary arms race and become a powerful catalyst for the creation of diversity, complexity, and even beauty, as we will see in the following chapters. Unfortunately, the role of cheating in evolution remains underappreciated today for two key reasons. One is historical.
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