Spatial social dilemmas promote diversity

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (42) ◽  
pp. e2105252118
Author(s):  
Christoph Hauert ◽  
Michael Doebeli

Cooperative investments in social dilemmas can spontaneously diversify into stably coexisting high and low contributors in well-mixed populations. Here we extend the analysis to emerging diversity in (spatially) structured populations. Using pair approximation, we derive analytical expressions for the invasion fitness of rare mutants in structured populations, which then yields a spatial adaptive dynamics framework. This allows us to predict changes arising from population structures in terms of existence and location of singular strategies, as well as their convergence and evolutionary stability as compared to well-mixed populations. Based on spatial adaptive dynamics and extensive individual-based simulations, we find that spatial structure has significant and varied impacts on evolutionary diversification in continuous social dilemmas. More specifically, spatial adaptive dynamics suggests that spontaneous diversification through evolutionary branching is suppressed, but simulations show that spatial dimensions offer new modes of diversification that are driven by an interplay of finite-size mutations and population structures. Even though spatial adaptive dynamics is unable to capture these new modes, they can still be understood based on an invasion analysis. In particular, population structures alter invasion fitness and can open up new regions in trait space where mutants can invade, but that may not be accessible to small mutational steps. Instead, stochastically appearing larger mutations or sequences of smaller mutations in a particular direction are required to bridge regions of unfavorable traits. The net effect is that spatial structure tends to promote diversification, especially when selection is strong.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Hauert ◽  
Michael Doebeli

Cooperative investments in social dilemmas can spontaneously diversify into stably co-existing high and low contributors in well-mixed populations. Here we extend the analysis to emerging diversity in (spatially) structured populations. Using pair approximation we derive analytical expressions for the invasion fitness of rare mutants in structured populations, which then yields a spatial adaptive dynamics framework. This allows us to predict changes arising from population structures in terms of existence and location of singular strategies, as well as their convergence and evolutionary stability as compared to well-mixed populations. Based on spatial adaptive dynamics and extensive individual based simulations, we find that spatial structure has significant and varied impacts on evolutionary diversification in continuous social dilemmas. More specifically, spatial adaptive dynamics suggests that spontaneous diversification through evolutionary branching is suppressed, but simulations show that spatial dimensions offer new modes of diversification that are driven by an interplay of finite-size mutations and population structures. Even though spatial adaptive dynamics is unable to capture these new modes, they can still be under-stood based on an invasion analysis. In particular, population structures alter invasion fitness and can open up new regions in trait space where mutants can invade, but that may not be accessible to small mutational steps. Instead, stochastically appearing larger mutations or sequences of smaller mutations in a particular direction are required to bridge regions of unfavourable traits. The net effect is that spatial structure tends to promote diversification, especially when selection is strong.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Peña ◽  
Bin Wu ◽  
Arne Traulsen

AbstractSpatial structure greatly affects the evolution of cooperation. While in two-player games the condition for cooperation to evolve depends on a single structure coefficient, in multiplayer games the condition might depend on several structure coefficients, making it difficult to compare different population structures. We propose a solution to this issue by introducing two simple ways of ordering population structures: the containment order and the volume order. If population structure 𝒮1 is greater than population structure 𝒮2 in the containment or the volume order, then 𝒮1 can be considered a stronger promoter of cooperation. We provide conditions for establishing the containment order, give general results on the volume order, and illustrate our theory by comparing different models of spatial games and associated update rules. Our results hold for a large class of population structures and can be easily applied to specific cases once the structure coefficients have been calculated or estimated.


2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua L. Payne ◽  
Margaret J. Eppstein

In complex adaptive systems, the topological properties of the interaction network are strong governing influences on the rate of flow of information throughout the system. For example, in epidemiological models, the structure of the underlying contact network has a pronounced impact on the rate of spread of infectious disease throughout a population. Similarly, in evolutionary systems, the topology of potential mating interactions (i.e., population structure) affects the rate of flow of genetic information and therefore affects selective pressure. One commonly employed method for quantifying selective pressure in evolutionary algorithms is through the analysis of the dynamics with which a single favorable mutation spreads throughout the population (a.k.a. takeover time analysis). While models of takeover dynamics have been previously derived for several specific regular population structures, these models lack generality. In contrast, so-called pair approximations have been touted as a general technique for rapidly approximating the flow of information in spatially structured populations with a constant (or nearly constant) degree of nodal connectivities, such as in epidemiological and ecological studies. In this work, we reformulate takeover time analysis in terms of the well-known Susceptible-Infectious-Susceptible model of disease spread and adapt the pair approximation for takeover dynamics. Our results show that the pair approximation, as originally formulated, is insufficient for approximating pre-equibilibrium dynamics, since it does not properly account for the interaction between the size and shape of the local neighborhood and the population size. After parameterizing the pair approximation to account for these influences, we demonstrate that the resulting pair approximation can serve as a general and rapid approximator for takeover dynamics on a variety of spatially-explicit regular interaction topologies with varying population sizes and varying uptake and reversion probabilities. Strengths, limitations, and potential applications of the pair approximation to evolutionary computation are discussed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1895) ◽  
pp. 20181949 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaojie Chen ◽  
Åke Brännström ◽  
Ulf Dieckmann

Dispersal is a key process for the emergence of social and biological behaviours. Yet, little attention has been paid to dispersal's effects on the evolution of cooperative behaviour in structured populations. To address this issue, we propose two new dispersal modes, parent-preferred and offspring-preferred dispersal, incorporate them into the birth–death update rule, and consider the resultant strategy evolution in the prisoner's dilemma on random-regular, small-world, and scale-free networks, respectively. We find that parent-preferred dispersal favours the evolution of cooperation in these different types of population structures, while offspring-preferred dispersal inhibits the evolution of cooperation in homogeneous populations. On scale-free networks when the strength of parent-preferred dispersal is weak, cooperation can be enhanced at intermediate strengths of offspring-preferred dispersal, and cooperators can coexist with defectors at high strengths of offspring-preferred dispersal. Moreover, our theoretical analysis based on the pair-approximation method corroborates the evolutionary outcomes on random-regular networks. We also incorporate the two new dispersal modes into three other update rules (death-birth, imitation, and pairwise comparison updating), and find that similar results about the effects of parent-preferred and offspring-preferred dispersal can again be observed in the aforementioned different types of population structures. Our work, thus, unveils robust effects of preferential dispersal modes on the evolution of cooperation in different interactive environments.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (114) ◽  
pp. 20150881 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Peña ◽  
Bin Wu ◽  
Arne Traulsen

Spatial structure greatly affects the evolution of cooperation. While in two-player games the condition for cooperation to evolve depends on a single structure coefficient, in multiplayer games the condition might depend on several structure coefficients, making it difficult to compare different population structures. We propose a solution to this issue by introducing two simple ways of ordering population structures: the containment order and the volume order. If population structure is greater than population structure in the containment or the volume order, then can be considered a stronger promoter of cooperation. We provide conditions for establishing the containment order, give general results on the volume order, and illustrate our theory by comparing different models of spatial games and associated update rules. Our results hold for a large class of population structures and can be easily applied to specific cases once the structure coefficients have been calculated or estimated.


Games ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Swami Iyer ◽  
Timothy Killingback

Cooperation in social dilemmas plays a pivotal role in the formation of systems at all levels of complexity, from replicating molecules to multi-cellular organisms to human and animal societies. In spite of its ubiquity, the origin and stability of cooperation pose an evolutionary conundrum, since cooperation, though beneficial to others, is costly to the individual cooperator. Thus natural selection would be expected to favor selfish behavior in which individuals reap the benefits of cooperation without bearing the costs of cooperating themselves. Many proximate mechanisms have been proposed to account for the origin and maintenance of cooperation, including kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and evolution in structured populations. Despite the apparent diversity of these approaches they all share a unified underlying logic: namely, each mechanism results in assortative interactions in which individuals using the same strategy interact with a higher probability than they would at random. Here we study the evolution of cooperation in both discrete strategy and continuous strategy social dilemmas with assortative interactions. For the sake of tractability, assortativity is modeled by an individual interacting with another of the same type with probability r and interacting with a random individual in the population with probability 1−r, where r is a parameter that characterizes the degree of assortativity in the system. For discrete strategy social dilemmas we use both a generalization of replicator dynamics and individual-based simulations to elucidate the donation, snowdrift, and sculling games with assortative interactions, and determine the analogs of Hamilton’s rule, which govern the evolution of cooperation in these games. For continuous strategy social dilemmas we employ both a generalization of deterministic adaptive dynamics and individual-based simulations to study the donation, snowdrift, and tragedy of the commons games, and determine the effect of assortativity on the emergence and stability of cooperation.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Peña ◽  
Bin Wu ◽  
Jordi Arranz ◽  
Arne Traulsen

AbstractThere has been much interest in studying evolutionary games in structured populations, often modelled as graphs. However, most analytical results so far have only been obtained for two-player or linear games, while the study of more complex multiplayer games has been usually tackled by computer simulations. Here we investigate evolutionary multiplayer games on graphs updated with a Moran death-Birth process. For cycles, we obtain an exact analytical condition for cooperation to be favored by natural selection, given in terms of the payoffs of the game and a set of structure coefficients. For regular graphs of degree three and larger, we estimate this condition using a combination of pair approximation and diffusion approximation. For a large class of cooperation games, our approximations suggest that graph-structured populations are stronger promoters of cooperation than populations lacking spatial structure. Computer simulations validate our analytical approximations for random regular graphs and cycles, but show systematic differences for graphs with many loops such as lattices. In particular, our simulation results show that these kinds of graphs can even lead to more stringent conditions for the evolution of cooperation than well-mixed populations. Overall, we provide evidence suggesting that the complexity arising from many-player interactions and spatial structure can be captured by pair approximation in the case of random graphs, but that it need to be handled with care for graphs with high clustering.Author SummaryCooperation can be defined as the act of providing fitness benefits to other individuals, often at a personal cost. When interactions occur mainly with neighbors, assortment of strategies can favor cooperation but local competition can undermine it. Previous research has shown that a single coefficient can capture this trade-off when cooperative interactions take place between two players. More complicated, but also more realistic models of cooperative interactions involving multiple players instead require several such coefficients, making it difficult to assess the effects of population structure. Here, we obtain analytical approximations for the coefficients of multiplayer games in graph-structured populations. Computer simulations show that, for particular instances of multiplayer games, these approximate coefficients predict the condition for cooperation to be promoted in random graphs well, but fail to do so in graphs with more structure, such as lattices. Our work extends and generalizes established results on the evolution of cooperation on graphs, but also highlights the importance of explicitly taking into account higher-order statistical associations in order to assess the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation in spatially structured populations.


2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 073035 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flávio L Pinheiro ◽  
Francisco C Santos ◽  
Jorge M Pacheco

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (152) ◽  
pp. 20180918 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessie Renton ◽  
Karen M. Page

Cooperation is prevalent in nature, not only in the context of social interactions within the animal kingdom but also on the cellular level. In cancer, for example, tumour cells can cooperate by producing growth factors. The evolution of cooperation has traditionally been studied for well-mixed populations under the framework of evolutionary game theory, and more recently for structured populations using evolutionary graph theory (EGT). The population structures arising due to cellular arrangement in tissues, however, are dynamic and thus cannot be accurately represented by either of these frameworks. In this work, we compare the conditions for cooperative success in an epithelium modelled using EGT, to those in a mechanical model of an epithelium—the Voronoi tessellation (VT) model. Crucially, in this latter model, cells are able to move, and birth and death are not spatially coupled. We calculate fixation probabilities in the VT model through simulation and an approximate analytic technique and show that this leads to stronger promotion of cooperation in comparison with the EGT model.


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