Heterogeneity in resources is a ubiquitous feature of natural landscapes affecting many aspects of biology. However, the effect of environmental heterogeneity on the evolution of cooperation has been less well studied. Here, using a mixture of theory and experiments measuring siderophore production by the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa as a model for public goods based cooperation, we explore the effect of heterogeneity in resource availability. We show that cooperation in metapopulations that were spatially heterogeneous in terms of resources can be maintained at a higher level than in homogeneous metapopulations of the same average resource value. The results can be explained by a positive covariance between fitness of cooperators, population size, and local resource availability, which allowed cooperators to have a disproportionate advantage within the heterogeneous metapopulations. These results suggest that natural environmental variation may help to maintain cooperation.

中文翻译：

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资源异质性与公益合作的演进

资源的异质性是影响生物许多方面的自然景观的普遍特征。但是，关于环境异质性对合作演变的影响的研究较少。在这里，结合理论和实验测量铜绿假单胞菌产生铁载体作为基于公共物品的合作模型，我们探讨了资源可用性中异质性的影响。我们表明，在资源方面在空间上异质的种群中的合作比在具有相同平均资源价值的同质种群中的合作可以维持在更高的水平。结果可以通过合作者的适应度，人口规模和本地资源可用性之间的正协方差来解释，这使合作者在异质性种群中具有不成比例的优势。这些结果表明自然环境变化可能有助于维持合作。