Related papers: The edge of neutral evolution in social dilemmas
The emergence of collective cooperation in competitive environments is a well-known phenomenon in biology, economics, and social systems. While most evolutionary game models focus on the evolution of strategies for a fixed game, how…
Game theory ideas provide a useful framework for studying evolutionary dynamics in a well-mixed environment. This approach, however, typically enforces a strictly fixed overall population size, deemphasizing natural growth processes. We…
We simulate the prisoner's dilemma and hawk-dove games on a real social acquaintance network. Using a discrete analogue of replicator dynamics, we show that surprisingly high levels of cooperation can be achieved, contrary to what happens…
Game theory formalizes certain interactions between physical particles or between living beings in biology, sociology, and economics, and quantifies the outcomes by payoffs. The prisoner's dilemma (PD) describes situations in which it is…
Eco-evolutionary dynamics is crucial to understand how individuals' behaviors and the surrounding environment interplay with each other. Typically, it is assumed that individuals update their behaviors via linear imitation function, i.e.,…
In a complex community, species continuously adapt to each other. On rare occasions, the adaptation of a species can lead to the extinction of others, and even its own. "Adaptive dynamics" is the standard mathematical framework to describe…
The selection pressures that have shaped the evolution of complex traits in humans remain largely unknown, and in some contexts highly contentious, perhaps above all where they concern mean trait differences among groups. To date, the…
The emergence and maintenance of cooperative behavior is a fascinating topic in evolutionary biology and social science. The public goods game (PGG) is a paradigm for exploring cooperative behavior. In PGG, the total resulting payoff is…
We study the stochastic dynamics of evolutionary games, and focus on the so-called `stochastic slowdown' effect, previously observed in (Altrock et. al, 2010) for simple evolutionary dynamics. Slowdown here refers to the fact that a…
The structure of social networks is a key determinant in fostering cooperation and other altruistic behavior among naturally selfish individuals. However, most real social interactions are temporal, being both finite in duration and spread…
Population expansions trigger many biomedical and ecological transitions, from tumor growth to invasions of non-native species. Although population spreading often selects for more invasive phenotypes, we show that this outcome is far from…
Stable mixtures of cooperators and defectors are often seen in nature. This fact is at odds with predictions based on linear public goods games under weak selection. That model implies fixation either of cooperators or of defectors, and the…
Experimental studies have shown the ubiquity of altruistic behavior in human societies. The social structure is a fundamental ingredient to understand the degree of altruism displayed by the members of a society, in contrast to…
The evolution of cooperation has been a perennial problem in evolutionary biology because cooperation can be undermined by selfish cheaters who gain an advantage in the short run, while compromising the long-term viability of the…
We study the evolution of cooperation in the spatial prisoner's dilemma game where players are allowed to establish new interactions with others. By employing a simple coevolutionary rule entailing only two crucial parameters, we find that…
One essential ingredient of evolutionary theory is the concept of fitness as a measure for a species' success in its living conditions. Here, we quantify the effect of environmental fluctuations onto fitness by analytical calculations on a…
Varying environmental conditions affect relations between interacting individuals in social dilemmas, thus affecting also the evolution of cooperation. Oftentimes these environmental variations are seasonal and can therefore be…
We study the emergency of mutual cooperation in evolutionary prisoner's dilemma games when the players are located on a square lattice. The players can choose one of the three strategies: cooperation (C), defection (D) or "tit for tat" (T),…
We show how highly-diverse ecological communities may display persistent abundance fluctuations, when interacting through resource competition and subjected to migration from a species pool. This turns out to be closely related to the ratio…
Evolutionary game theory has been successfully used to investigate the dynamics of systems, in which many entities have competitive interactions. From a physics point of view, it is interesting to study conditions under which a coordination…