Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 116, Issue 51, Pages 25398-25404Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1908936116
Keywords
cooperation; evolutionary game theory; game transitions; structured populations
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [61751301, 61533001]
- China Scholar Council [201706010277]
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [OPP1148627]
- Army Research Laboratory [W911NF-18-2-0265]
- Office of Naval Research [N00014-16-1-2914]
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The environment has a strong influence on a population's evolutionary dynamics. Driven by both intrinsic and external factors, the environment is subject to continual change in nature. To capture an ever-changing environment, we consider a model of evolutionary dynamics with game transitions, where individuals' behaviors together with the games that they play in one time step influence the games to be played in the next time step. Within this model, we study the evolution of cooperation in structured populations and find a simple rule: Weak selection favors cooperation over defection if the ratio of the benefit provided by an altruistic behavior, b, to the corresponding cost, c, exceeds k - k', where k is the average number of neighbors of an individual and k' captures the effects of the game transitions. Even if cooperation cannot be favored in each individual game, allowing for a transition to a relatively valuable game after mutual cooperation and to a less valuable game after defection can result in a favorable outcome for cooperation. In particular, small variations in different games being played can promote cooperation markedly. Our results suggest that simple game transitions can serve as a mechanism for supporting prosocial behaviors in highly connected populations.
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