1. Mistakes can stabilise the dynamics of rock-paper-scissors games
- Author
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Krishnendu Chatterjee, Maria Kleshnina, Jerzy A. Filar, and Sabrina Streipert
- Subjects
Evolutionary Genetics ,0301 basic medicine ,Computer science ,Population Dynamics ,Social Sciences ,Stable equilibrium ,Cognition ,0302 clinical medicine ,Psychology ,050207 economics ,Biology (General) ,Strategy execution ,0303 health sciences ,Animal Behavior ,Ecology ,Applied Mathematics ,05 social sciences ,Biological Evolution ,Computational Theory and Mathematics ,Dynamics (music) ,Modeling and Simulation ,Physical Sciences ,Probability distribution ,Mathematical economics ,Game theory ,Research Article ,QH301-705.5 ,Decision Making ,Microbiology ,03 medical and health sciences ,Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience ,Game Theory ,0502 economics and business ,Genetics ,Humans ,Animal behavior ,Evolutionary dynamics ,Molecular Biology ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,030304 developmental biology ,Behavior ,Evolutionary Biology ,Population Biology ,Cognitive Psychology ,Biology and Life Sciences ,Probability Theory ,Probability Distribution ,Organismal Evolution ,030104 developmental biology ,Microbial Evolution ,Cognitive Science ,Zoology ,Mathematics ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Neuroscience - Abstract
A game of rock-paper-scissors is an interesting example of an interaction where none of the pure strategies strictly dominates all others, leading to a cyclic pattern. In this work, we consider an unstable version of rock-paper-scissors dynamics and allow individuals to make behavioural mistakes during the strategy execution. We show that such an assumption can break a cyclic relationship leading to a stable equilibrium emerging with only one strategy surviving. We consider two cases: completely random mistakes when individuals have no bias towards any strategy and a general form of mistakes. Then, we determine conditions for a strategy to dominate all other strategies. However, given that individuals who adopt a dominating strategy are still prone to behavioural mistakes in the observed behaviour, we may still observe extinct strategies. That is, behavioural mistakes in strategy execution stabilise evolutionary dynamics leading to an evolutionary stable and, potentially, mixed co-existence equilibrium., Author summary A game of rock-paper-scissors is more than just a children’s game. This type of interactions is often used to describe competition among animals or humans. A special feature of such an interaction is that none of the pure strategies dominates, resulting in a cyclic pattern. However, in wild communities such interactions are rarely observed by biologists. Our results suggest that this lack of cyclicity may stem from imperfectness of interacting individuals. In other words, we show analytically that heterogeneity in behavioural patterns may break a cyclic relationship and lead to a stable equilibrium in pure or mixed strategies.
- Published
- 2021