  The evolution of cooperation in social dilemmas in structured populations has
been studied extensively in recent years. Whereas many theoretical studies have
found that a heterogeneous network of contacts favors cooperation, the impact
of spatial effects in scale-free networks is still not well understood. In
addition to being heterogeneous, real contact networks exhibit a high mean
local clustering coefficient, which implies the existence of an underlying
metric space. Here, we show that evolutionary dynamics in scale-free networks
self-organize into spatial patterns in the underlying metric space. The
resulting metric clusters of cooperators are able to survive in social dilemmas
as their spatial organization shields them from surrounding defectors, similar
to spatial selection in Euclidean space. We show that under certain conditions
these metric clusters are more efficient than the most connected nodes at
sustaining cooperation and that heterogeneity does not always favor--but can
even hinder--cooperation in social dilemmas. Our findings provide a new
perspective to understand the emergence of cooperation in evolutionary games in
realistic structured populations.
