Figure 7

Shortest cycles, their length and crossfeeding. A. For the three selection regimes the mean shortest cycle with standard deviations is plotted through time. Inset panels show the corresponding average bite length on the shortest cycle. In all panels the mean and standard deviation are computed from 25 replicate runs. Using permutation tests, we established all three curves are significantly different (all p < 0.004). B. Number of runs with crossfeeding through time. In short, crossfeeding is present if the shortest cycle cannot be performed by a single group of phenotypically identical individuals, with the group having at least 5 individuals (see Methods).