  Tolerance implies enduring trying circumstances with a fair and objective
attitude. To determine whether evolutionary advantages might be stemming from
diverse levels of tolerance in a population, we study a spatial public goods
game, where in addition to cooperators, defectors, and loners, tolerant players
are also present. Depending on the number of defectors within a group, a
tolerant player can either cooperate in or abstain from a particular instance
of the game. We show that the diversity of tolerance can give rise to
synergistic effects, wherein players with a different threshold in terms of the
tolerated number of defectors in a group compete most effectively against
defection and default abstinence. Such synergistic associations can stabilise
states of full cooperation where otherwise defection would dominate. We observe
complex pattern formation that gives rise to an intricate phase diagram, where
invisible yet stable strategy alliances require outmost care lest they are
overlooked. Our results highlight the delicate importance of diversity and
tolerance for the provisioning of public goods, and they reveal fascinating
subtleties of the spatiotemporal dynamics that is due to the competition of
subsystem solutions in structured populations.
