Suppression force-fields and diffuse competition: Competition de-escalation is an evolutionarily stable strategy

Competition theory is founded on the premise that individuals benefit from harming their competitors, which helps them secure resources and prevent inhibition by neighbours. When multiple individuals compete, however, competition has complex indirect effects that reverberate through competitive neighbourhoods. The consequences of such “diffuse” competition are poorly understood. For example, competitive effects may dilute as they propagate through a neighbourhood, weakening benefits of neighbour suppression. Another possibility is that competitive effects may rebound on strong competitors, as their inhibitory effects on their neighbours benefit other competitors in the community. Diffuse competition is unintuitive in part because we lack a clear conceptual framework for understanding how individual interactions manifest in communities of multiple competitors. Here, I use mathematical and agent-based models to illustrate that diffuse interactions—as opposed to direct pairwise interaction..., The data are based on mathematical and computational simulations, executed and analyzed in R., Scripts can be viewed in any scripting software or text editor. Data files need to be opened in R.竞争理论的核心前提为：个体通过损害竞争者可获益，这能帮助其获取资源并避免被邻体抑制。然而，当多个个体参与竞争时，竞争会产生复杂的间接效应，并在竞争邻体群落中扩散传播。这类“弥散性（diffuse）”竞争的后果目前仍未得到充分理解。例如，竞争效应在邻体群落中传播时可能会被稀释，削弱邻体抑制所带来的收益。另一种可能性是，竞争效应可能会反噬强势竞争者——它们对邻体的抑制作用反而会令群落中的其他竞争者获益。弥散性竞争之所以难以直观理解，部分原因在于我们缺乏清晰的概念框架，用以阐释个体间的相互作用如何在多竞争者群落中体现。本文中，我将通过数学模型与基于智能体（Agent）的模型证明，弥散性相互作用——与直接两两相互作用相对…… 本数据集基于在R语言中执行与分析的数学与计算模拟结果。脚本可通过任意脚本软件或文本编辑器查看，数据文件需在R环境中打开。