Eco-evolutionary dynamics of social dilemmas
Chaitanya S. Gokhale, Christoph Hauert

TL;DR
This paper explores how ecological fluctuations and non-linear social interactions influence the evolution of cooperation, revealing complex dynamics that help maintain cooperation at high densities in changing environments.
Contribution
It introduces a model analyzing eco-evolutionary feedbacks in non-linear social dilemmas with fluctuating populations and environments, highlighting complex dynamics.
Findings
Ecological fluctuations support high-density cooperation.
Complex dynamics emerge from eco-evolutionary feedbacks.
Non-linear interactions influence cooperation stability.
Abstract
Social dilemmas are an integral part of social interactions. Cooperative actions, ranging from secreting extra-cellular products in microbial populations to donating blood in humans, are costly to the actor and hence create an incentive to shirk and avoid the costs. Nevertheless, cooperation is ubiquitous in nature. Both costs and benefits often depend non-linearly on the number and types of individuals involved -- as captured by idioms such as `too many cooks spoil the broth' where additional contributions are discounted, or `two heads are better than one' where cooperators synergistically enhance the group benefit. Interaction group sizes may depend on the size of the population and hence on ecological processes. This results in feedback mechanisms between ecological and evolutionary processes, which jointly affect and determine the evolutionary trajectory. Only recently combined…
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