Imperfect Strategy Transmission Can Reverse the Role of Population Viscosity on the Evolution of Altruism

Population viscosity, i.e., low emigration out of the natal deme, leads to high within-deme relatedness, which is beneficial to the evolution of altruistic behavior when social interactions take place among deme-mates. However, a detrimental side effect of low emigration is the increase in competition among related individuals. The evolution of altruism depends on the balance between these opposite effects. This balance is already known to be affected by details of the life cycle; we show here that it further depends on the fidelity of strategy transmission from parents to their offspring. We consider different life cycles and identify thresholds of parent–offspring strategy transmission inaccuracy, above which higher emigration can increase the frequency of altruists maintained in the population. Predictions were first obtained analytically assuming weak selection and equal deme sizes and then confirmed with stochastic simulations relaxing these assumptions. Contrary to what happens with perfect strategy transmission from parent to offspring, our results show that higher emigration can be favorable to the evolution of altruism.