Starting with Darwin, biologists have asked how populations evolve from a low
fitness state that is evolutionarily stable to a high fitness state that is
not. Specifically of interest is the emergence of cooperation and
multicellularity where the fitness of individuals often appears in conflict
with that of the population. Theories of social evolution and evolutionary game
theory have produced a number of fruitful results employing two-state two-body
frameworks. In this study we depart from this tradition and instead consider a
multi-player, multi-state evolutionary game, in which the fitness of an agent
is determined by its relationship to an arbitrary number of other agents. We
show that populations organize themselves in one of four distinct phases of
interdependence depending on one parameter, selection strength. Some of these
phases involve the formation of specialized large-scale structures. We then
describe how the evolution of independence can be manipulated through various
external perturbations.Comment: To download simulation code cf. article in Proceedings of the Royal
Society, Interfac
