On the preservation of cooperation in two-strategy games with nonlocal interactions

Discovering the effect of nonlocal payoff calculation on the stabilty of ESS: Spatial patterns of Hawk-Dove game in metapopulations

The classical idea of evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) modeling animal behavior does not involve any spatial dependence. We considered a spatial Hawk-Dove game played by animals in a patchy environment with wrap around boundaries. We posit that each site contains the same number of individuals. An evolution equation for analyzing the stability of the ESS is found as the mean dynamics of the classical frequency dependent Moran process coupled via migration and nonlocal payoff calculation in 1D and 2D habitats. The linear stability analysis of the model is performed and conditions to observe spatial patterns are investigated. For the nearest neighbor interactions (including von Neumann and Moore neighborhoods in 2D) we concluded that it is possible to destabilize the ESS of the game and observe pattern formation when the dispersal rate is small enough. We numerically investigate the spatial patterns arising from the replicator equations coupled via nearest neighbor payoff calculation and dispersal.