Species coexistence in spatial cyclic game of five species

Abstract

The evolutionary game of cyclic competition has been extensively studied to gain insight into one of the most fundamental phenomena in nature: biodiversity. The three-species Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) game and its extension Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock (RPSLS) game are typical models in this field. However, in real ecosystems, species richness can be easily influenced by the interaction structure among species. In this paper, we investigate species coexistence in modified RPSLS games by removing certain predator-prey interactions. We find that the interaction structure impacts the evolutionary dynamics and different interaction structures allow for different states of multi-species coexistence. We also find that the competition between different three-species-cyclic interactions is crucial for the realization of different asymptotic behaviors at low mobility. Our findings may be useful to understand the subtle effects of competitive structure on species coexistence and evolutionary game outcomes.