Evolutionary and dynamical coherence resonances in the pair approximated prisoner's dilemma game

Abstract

Stochasticity has recently emerged as being a potent promoter of cooperative behaviour in systems developed under the framework of evolutionary game theory. In the spatial prisoner's dilemma game, the fitness of players adopting the cooperative strategy was found to be resonantly dependent on the intensity of payoff fluctuations. Evidently, the phenomenon resembles classical coherence resonance, whereby the noise-induced order, or coherence, of the dynamics is substituted with the noise-induced prevalence of the ‘good’ strategy, thus marking a constructive effect of noise on the system. The connection between the former ‘dynamical’ coherence resonance and the latter so-called ‘evolutionary’ coherence resonance, however, has not yet been established. The two different definitions of coherence resonance appear to provoke some discomfort. The goal of the present paper is therefore, on one hand, to draw a clear line between the two different perceptions of coherence resonance, and on the other, to show that the two apparently disjoint phenomena, that are currently related only by name, can in fact be observed simultaneously, sharing an identical mechanism of emergence.