Persistence of cooperation in diffusive public goods games

Diffusive public goods (PG) games are difficult to analyze due to population assortment affecting growth rates of cooperators (producers) and free-riders. We study these growth rates using spectral decomposition of cellular densities and derive a finite cell-size correction of the growth rate advantage which exactly describes the dynamics of a randomly assorted population and approximates the dynamics under limited dispersal. The resulting effective benefit-to-cost ratio relates the physical parameters of PG dynamics to the persistence of cooperation, and our findings provide a powerful tool for the analysis of diffusive PG games, explaining commonly observed patterns of cooperation