%0 Journal Article %A Jorge Peña %A Bin Wu %A Arne Traulsen %T Containment and volume orders of cooperation %D 2015 %R 10.1101/021550 %J bioRxiv %P 021550 %X Spatial structure can crucially affect the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation. In simple cases, based on pairwise interactions or similar strategies, the effect of spatial structure can be captured by a single relatedness or structure coefficient, with larger coefficients being more conducive to the evolution of cooperation. In more general situations, based on the interaction among multiple individuals with distinct strategies, the condition depends on several structure coefficients, and a simple comparison between different models is no longer straightforward. Here, we propose two ways of ordering population structures by their potential to promote the evolution of cooperation: the containment order and the volume order. We provide conditions for establishing comparability or incomparability in the containment order, give general results concerning the volume order, and illustrate our theory by comparing different models of spatial structure and evolutionary dynamics. Our framework allows to compare many previously studied models of population structure quantitatively. This comparison will be of great value for the unification and generalization of models for the evolution of cooperation in spatially structured populations. %U https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2015/06/26/021550.full.pdf