We review recent research which reveals: (1) how spatially distributed populations avoid overexploiting resources due to the local extinction of over-exploitative variants, and (2) how the conventional understanding of evolutionary processes is violated by spatial populations so that basic concepts, including fitness assignment to individual organisms, are not applicable, and even kin and group selection are unable to describe the mechanism by which exploitative behavior is bounded. To understand these evolutionary processes, a broader view is needed of the properties of multiscale spatiotemporal patterns in organism-environment interactions. We discuss measures that quantify the effects of these interactions on the evolution of a population, including multigenerational fitness and the heritability of the environment. (c) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.1352344