The Prisoner’s dilemma is the main game theoretical framework in which the onset and maintainance of cooperation in biological populations is studied. In the spatial version of the model, we study the robustness of cooperation in heterogeneous ecosystems in spatial evolutionary games by considering site diluted lattices. The main result is that, due to disorder, the fraction of cooperators in the population is enhanced. Moreover, the system presents a dynamical transition at ${\rho }^{*},$ separating a region with spatial chaos from one with localized, stable groups of cooperators.

• Received 4 April 2001

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.64.051905