Mobility-Dependent Selection of Competing Strategy Associations

Abstract

Standard models of population dynamics focus on the the interaction, survival, and extinction of the competing species individually. Real ecological systems, however, are characterized by an abundance of species (or strategies, in the terminology of evolutionary-game theory) that form intricate, complex interaction networks. The description of the ensuing dynamics may be aided by studying associations of certain strategies rather than individual ones. Here we show how such a higher-level description can bear fruitful insight. Motivated from different strains of colicinogenic Escherichia coli bacteria, we investigate a four-strategy system which contains a three-strategy cycle and a neutral alliance of two strategies. We find that the stochastic, spatial model exhibits a mobility-dependent selection of either the three-strategy cycle or of the neutral pair. We analyze this intriguing phenomenon numerically and analytically.

9 pages, six figures; accepted in Physical Review E

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Cyclic dominance in evolutionary games: A review
• Data Based Identification and Prediction of Nonlinear and Complex Dynamical Systems
• Stochastic population dynamics in spatially extended predator-prey systems
• Evolutionary potential games on lattices
• Pattern formations driven by cyclic interactions: a brief review of recent developments
• Reentrant phase transitions and defensive alliances in social dilemmas with informed strategies
• A theoretical approach to understand spatial organization in complex ecologies
• String networks with junctions in competition models
• Synchronization and extinction in cyclic games with mixed strategies
• Specialization and Bet Hedging in Heterogeneous Populations
• Interface networks in models of competing alliances