2 research outputs found
Seasonal payoff variations and the evolution of cooperation in social dilemmas
Varying environmental conditions affect relations between interacting
individuals in social dilemmas, thus affecting also the evolution of
cooperation. Oftentimes these environmental variations are seasonal and can
therefore be mathematically described as periodic changes. Accordingly, we here
study how periodic shifts between different manifestations of social dilemmas
affect cooperation. We observe a non-trivial interplay between the inherent
spatiotemporal dynamics that characterizes the spreading of cooperation in a
particular social dilemma type and the frequency of payoff changes. In
particular, we show that periodic changes between two available games with
global ordering best be fast, while periodic changes between global and local
ordering games best be slow for cooperation to thrive. We also show that the
frequency of periodic changes between two local ordering social dilemmas is
irrelevant, because then the process is fast and simply the average cooperation
level of the two is returned. The structure of the interaction network plays an
important role too in that lattices promote local ordering, whilst random
graphs hinder the formation of compact cooperative clusters. Conversely, for
local ordering the regular structure of the interaction network is only
marginally relevant as role-separating checkerboard patterns do not rely on
long-range order.Comment: 9 two-column pages, 6 figures; accepted for publication in Scientific
Report