Journal article
The opportunity cost of walking away in the spatial iterated prisoner’s dilemma
Theoretical population biology, Vol.127, pp.40-48
06/2019
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/117712
PMID: 30946861
Abstract
Previous work with the spatial iterated prisoner’s dilemma has shown that the ability to respond to a partner’s defection by simply “walking away” allows so-called walk away cooperators to outcompete defectors as well as cooperators that do not respond to defection. These findings are important because they suggest a relatively simple route by which cooperation can evolve. But it remains to be seen just how robust the walk away strategy is to ecologically important variables such as population density, strategic error, and offspring dispersal. The results of our simulation experiments show that the evolutionary success of walk away cooperators decreases with decreasing population density and/or with increasing error. This relationship is best explained by the ways in which population density and error jointly affect the opportunity cost of walking away. This opportunity cost also explains why naive cooperators regularly outcompete walk away cooperators in pair-wise competition, something not observed in previous studies. Our results further show that local offspring dispersal can inhibit the evolution of cooperation by negating the protection low population density affords the most vulnerable cooperators. Our research identifies socio-ecological conditions in which forgiveness trumps flight in the spatial iterated prisoner’s dilemma.
•Walk away cooperators pay an opportunity cost for leaving error-prone partners.•The opportunity cost increases with increasing error and decreasing density.•Walk away cooperators can enhance the evolutionary success of naïve cooperators.•Naïve cooperators are often less vulnerable to invasion than walk away cooperators.•Naïve cooperators find strength in far-flung, long-lived mutually beneficial dyads.
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Details
- Title
- The opportunity cost of walking away in the spatial iterated prisoner’s dilemma
- Creators
- L.S Premo - Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4910, USAJustin R Brown - Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4910, USA
- Publication Details
- Theoretical population biology, Vol.127, pp.40-48
- Academic Unit
- Anthropology, Department of
- Publisher
- Elsevier Inc
- Identifiers
- 99900582338301842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article