scholarly journals Evolutionary games and population dynamics: maintenance of cooperation in public goods games

2006 ◽  
Vol 273 (1600) ◽  
pp. 2565-2571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Hauert ◽  
Miranda Holmes ◽  
Michael Doebeli

The emergence and abundance of cooperation in nature poses a tenacious and challenging puzzle to evolutionary biology. Cooperative behaviour seems to contradict Darwinian evolution because altruistic individuals increase the fitness of other members of the population at a cost to themselves. Thus, in the absence of supporting mechanisms, cooperation should decrease and vanish, as predicted by classical models for cooperation in evolutionary game theory, such as the Prisoner's Dilemma and public goods games. Traditional approaches to studying the problem of cooperation assume constant population sizes and thus neglect the ecology of the interacting individuals. Here, we incorporate ecological dynamics into evolutionary games and reveal a new mechanism for maintaining cooperation. In public goods games, cooperation can gain a foothold if the population density depends on the average population payoff. Decreasing population densities, due to defection leading to small payoffs, results in smaller interaction group sizes in which cooperation can be favoured. This feedback between ecological dynamics and game dynamics can generate stable coexistence of cooperators and defectors in public goods games. However, this mechanism fails for pairwise Prisoner's Dilemma interactions and the population is driven to extinction. Our model represents natural extension of replicator dynamics to populations of varying densities.

1994 ◽  
Vol 04 (01) ◽  
pp. 33-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTIN A. NOWAK ◽  
SEBASTIAN BONHOEFFER ◽  
ROBERT M. MAY

We extend our exploration of the dynamics of spatial evolutionary games [Nowak & May 1992, 1993] in three distinct but related ways. We analyse, first, deterministic versus stochastic rules; second, discrete versus continuous time (see Hubermann & Glance [1993]); and, third, different geometries of interaction in regular and random spatial arrays. We show that spatial effects can change some of the intuitive concepts in evolutionary game theory: (i) equilibria among strategies are no longer necessarily characterised by equal average payoffs; (ii) the strategy with the higher average payoff can steadily converge towards extinction; (iii) strategies can become extinct even though their basic reproductive rate (at very low frequencies) is larger than one. The equilibrium properties of spatial games are instead determined by “local relative payoffs.” We characterise the conditions for coexistence between cooperators and defectors in the spatial prisoner’s dilemma game. We find that cooperation can be maintained if the transition rules give more weight to the most successful neighbours, or if there is a certain probability that cells may remain unoccupied in the next generations when they are surrounded by players with low payoffs. In this second case the cooperators can survive despite a very large payoff advantage to defectors. We also compute average extinction times for random drift in neutral spatial models. Finally we briefly describe the spatial dynamics of an interaction among three species which dominate each other in a cyclic fashion. The emphasis of this paper is presenting a variety of ideas and possibilities for further research in the evolutionary dynamics of spatial games. The overall conclusion is that interactions with local neighbours in 2- or 3-dimensional spatial arrays can promote coexistence of different strategies (such as cooperators and defectors in the Prisoner’s Dilemma), in situations where one strategy would exclude all others if the interactions occurred randomly and homogeneously.


Author(s):  
Angsheng Li ◽  
Xi Yong

The authors proposed a quantum Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) game as a natural extension of the classic PD game to resolve the dilemma. Here, we establish a new Nash equilibrium principle of the game, propose the notion of convergence and discover the convergence and phase-transition phenomena of the evolutionary games on networks. We investigate the many-body extension of the game or evolutionary games in networks. For homogeneous networks, we show that entanglement guarantees a quick convergence of super cooperation, that there is a phase transition from the convergence of defection to the convergence of super cooperation, and that the threshold for the phase transitions is principally determined by the Nash equilibrium principle of the game, with an accompanying perturbation by the variations of structures of networks. For heterogeneous networks, we show that the equilibrium frequencies of super-cooperators are divergent, that entanglement guarantees emergence of super-cooperation and that there is a phase transition of the emergence with the threshold determined by the Nash equilibrium principle, accompanied by a perturbation by the variations of structures of networks. Our results explore systematically, for the first time, the dynamics, morphogenesis and convergence of evolutionary games in interacting and competing systems.


2003 ◽  
Vol 14 (07) ◽  
pp. 963-971 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. AHMED ◽  
A. S. HEGAZI ◽  
A. S. ELGAZZAR

The Sato–Crutchfield equations are analytically and numerically studied. The Sato–Crutchfield formulation corresponds to losing memory. Then the Sato–Crutchfield formulation is applied for some different types of games including hawk–dove, prisoner's dilemma and the battle of the sexes games. The Sato–Crutchfield formulation is found not to affect the evolutionarily stable strategy of the ordinary games. But choosing a strategy becomes purely random, independent of the previous experiences, initial conditions, and the rules of the game itself. The Sato–Crutchfield formulation for the prisoner's dilemma game can be considered as a theoretical explanation for the existence of cooperation in a population of defectors.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacek Miȩkisz ◽  
Marek Bodnar

AbstractWe address the issue of stability of coexistence of two strategies with respect to time delays in evolving populations. It is well known that time delays may cause oscillations. Here we report a novel behavior. We show that a microscopic model of evolutionary games with a unique mixed evolutionarily stable strategy (a globally asymptotically stable interior stationary state in the standard replicator dynamics) and with strategy-dependent time delays leads to a new type of replicator dynamics. It describes the time evolution of fractions of the population playing given strategies and the size of the population. Unlike in all previous models, an interior stationary state of such dynamics depends continuously on time delays and at some point it might disappear, no cycles are present. In particular, this means that an arbitrarily small time delay changes an interior stationary state. Moreover, at certain time delays, there may appear another interior stationary state.Author summarySocial and biological processes are usually described by ordinary or partial differential equations, or by Markov processes if we take into account stochastic perturbations. However, interactions between individuals, players or molecules, naturally take time. Results of biological interactions between individuals may appear in the future, and in social models, individuals or players may act, that is choose appropriate strategies, on the basis of the information concerning events in the past. It is natural therefore to introduce time delays into evolutionary game models. It was usually observed, and expected, that small time delays do not change the behavior of the system and large time delays may cause oscillations. Here we report a novel behavior. We show that microscopic models of evolutionary games with strategy-dependent time delays, in which payoffs appear some time after interactions of individuals, lead to a new type of replicator dynamics. Unlike in all previous models, interior stationary states of such dynamics depend continuously on time delays. This shows that effects of time delays are much more complex than it was previously thought.


2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (25) ◽  
pp. 2581-2589 ◽  
Author(s):  
WEN-BO DU ◽  
HONG ZHOU ◽  
ZHEN LIU ◽  
XIAN-BIN CAO

The evolutionary game on graphs provides a natural framework to investigate the cooperation behavior existing in natural and social society. In this paper, degree-based pinning control and random pinning control are introduced into the evolutionary prisoner's dilemma game on scale-free networks, and the effects of control mechanism and control cost on the evolution are studied. Numerical simulation shows that forcing some nodes to cooperate (defect) will increase (decrease) the frequency of cooperators. Compared with random pinning control, degree-based pinning control is more efficient, and degree-based pinning control costs less than random pinning control to achieve the same goal. Numerical results also reveal that the evolutionary time series is more stable under pinning control mechanisms, especially under the degree-based pinning control.


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