Group selection models combine selection pressure at the individual level with selection pressure at the group level. Cooperation can be costly for individuals, but beneficial for the group, and therefore, if individuals are sufficiently much assorted, and cooperators find themselves in groups with disproportionately many other cooperators, cooperation can evolve. The existing literature on group selection generally assumes that competition between groups takes place in a well‐mixed population of groups, where any group competes with any other group equally intensely. Competition between groups however might very well occur locally; groups may compete more intensely with nearby than with far‐away groups. We show that if competition between groups is indeed local, then the evolution of cooperation can be hindered significantly by the fact that groups with many cooperators will mostly compete against neighboring groups that are also highly cooperative, and therefore harder to outcompete. The existing empirical method for determining how conducive a group structured population is to the evolution of cooperation also implicitly assumes global between‐group competition, and therefore gives (possibly very) biased estimates.

中文翻译：

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群体层面的抵消效应


群体选择模型将个人层面的选择压力与群体层面的选择压力结合起来。合作对个人来说可能代价高昂，但对群体有益，因此，如果个体的种类足够多，并且合作者发现自己处于拥有不成比例的许多其他合作者的群体中，合作就可以发展。现有关于群体选择的文献通常假设群体之间的竞争发生在混合良好的群体中，其中任何群体与任何其他群体的竞争同样激烈。然而，团体之间的竞争很可能发生在本地；群体与附近群体的竞争可能比与远处群体的竞争更为激烈。我们表明，如果群体之间的竞争确实是局部的，那么合作的演变可能会受到严重阻碍，因为具有许多合作者的群体将主要与同样高度合作的邻近群体竞争，因此更难在竞争中获胜。现有的用于确定群体结构人口对合作进化的有利程度的经验方法也隐含地假设了全球群体间竞争，因此给出了（可能非常）有偏差的估计。