Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. slevin@eno.princeton.edu.
ABSTRACT: Explaining the evolution of cooperative behavior is a long-standing problem for which much theory has been developed. A recent paper in BMC Biology tests central elements of this theory by manipulating a simple bacterial experimental system. This approach is useful for assessing the principles of social evolution, but we argue that more effort must be invested in the inverse problem: using social evolution theory to understand the lives of bacteria.