Evolutionary game theory

Abstract

It is often the case that the best thing for an animal or plant to do depends on what other members of the population are doing. In more technical language, the fitnesses of different phenotypes are frequency-dependent. Evolutionary game theory has been developed to analyse such cases. In this paper I aim to do three things. First, I describe the concepts of evolutionary game theory in the context of a simple game, the Hawk-Dove game, and compare them with the concepts of classical game theory originating with Von Neumann and Morgenstern (1953) [1]. Second, I list some of the applications of the theory. Finally, I suggest how the theory can tell us something about the evolution of learning.