Coevolution of cooperation and network structure in social dilemmas in evolutionary dynamic complex network

Abstract

Emergence of cooperation in social dilemmas is an essential phenomena for the functioning of numerous multilevel and complex systems. The evidence of cooperation ranges from the elementary biological organisms to the most sophisticated human societies. Although emergence of cooperation is widely experienced, but its evolution is not well explained, since natural selection typically promotes selfish behaviours which are often not socially optimal. In this paper the coevolution of network structure and emergence of cooperation is studied in four classes of social dilemmas, representing the prisoner's dilemma, Hawk–Dove, snowdrift and coordination classes of games, in structured populations defined by weighted complex networks. The strength of interaction between two individuals is represented by network (edge) weight, which changes according to individuals’ preference through the evolutionary network dynamics. Using evolutionary dynamic network based simulations of the games model on randomly weighted complete networks, we present a detailed study of the evolution of dynamic complex network through the evolution of the structural properties of a network, such as clustering coefficient, assortativity coefficient, entropy of degree distribution, average strength of interaction and the promotion of cooperative behaviour in all four classes of games. The effect of changing the cost-to-benefit ratio on these network properties and evolution of cooperation is also reported.