Abstract
In this paper, I investigate the co-evolution of fast and slow strategy spread and game strategies in populations of spatially distributed agents engaged in a one off evolutionary dilemma game. Agents are characterized by a pair of traits, a game strategy (cooperate or defect) and a binary ‘advertising’ strategy (advertise or don’t advertise). Advertising, which comes at a cost , allows investment into faster propagation of the agents’ traits to adjacent individuals. Importantly, game strategy and advertising strategy are subject to the same evolutionary mechanism. Via analytical reasoning and numerical simulations I demonstrate that a range of advertising costs exists, such that the prevalence of cooperation is significantly enhanced through co-evolution. Linking costly replication to the success of cooperators exposes a novel co-evolutionary mechanism that might contribute towards a better understanding of the origins of cooperation-supporting heterogeneity in agent populations.
Highlights
Cooperative behaviour - acting for the benefit of the group even if not in the immediate interest of the individual - is common in life
The threshold for the viability of advertising for defectors is the same as for the advertising game alone, i.e. given by Eq (8). Both arguments let one surmise that there must be a range of advertising costs acvava(c2) such that advertising is profitable for cooperators but not to defectors
In this paper I have discussed ‘advertising’ as a mechanism by which agents can make a costly investment into faster strategy propagation in evolutionary dilemma games in space
Summary
Cooperative behaviour - acting for the benefit of the group even if not in the immediate interest of the individual - is common in life. Explaining the emergence and sustainability of cooperation has attracted considerable interest over the last decades. Two individuals are simultaneously faced with a choice between two options, ‘‘C’’ (for cooperate) and ‘‘D’’ (for defect). Defectors playing against cooperators receive the temptation to defect T while cooperators are paid the ‘‘sucker’s’’ payoff S in these interactions. Payoffs are ranked TwRwPwS and Tv2R such that irrespective of an opponent’s choice an individual is best off by playing D. The Nash equilibrium is (D,D) with a group payoff of 2P which is inferior to the social optimum of 2R that could be achieved by playing (C,C).
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