Evolution of cooperation in public goods games with segregated networks and periodic invasion

Abstract

Despite the cost, rational individuals routinely modify their relationships in social networks to optimize their payoffs. To develop this observation, we propose a segregation strategy that impels individuals to sever the adverse ties between defectors and their group at some cost, and then we randomly rewire the link-broken cooperative individuals. Moreover, time-varying environmental factors impact the relationships between interacting individuals, in particular certain periodic changes such as the circadian rhythm and seasonality, thus affecting the evolution of cooperation in spatial public goods games. By this means, periodic invasion is taken into account, which allows defectors with lower degrees than the initial value to randomly restore links and invade the population again. Through simulation, we find that the segregation strategy involving periodic invasion can effectively facilitate cooperation by formatting assortative and heterogeneous topology. Furthermore, we observe a subtle interplay between the costly topology control strategy and the exogenous changes in temporal factors that alter the spatiotemporal dynamics of coevolution and promote cooperation. We conclude that a relatively low periodic invasion frequency contributes to increasing the level of cooperation, but the threshold of cooperation is not sensitive to the change in invasion period when at longer intervals. We present our interpretations of these phenomena, which thus allow us to better understand the role of this new machine in the emergence of cooperation.