The Organization and Control of an Evolving Interdependent Population

TL;DR

This paper explores how populations evolve from low to high fitness states, revealing four phases of interdependence and how external factors can influence their organization and independence.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-player, multi-state evolutionary game framework, extending beyond traditional two-state models to analyze population organization.

Findings

Populations organize into four distinct phases of interdependence.

Certain phases involve the formation of large-scale specialized structures.

External perturbations can manipulate the evolution of independence.

Abstract

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.