The Emergence of Cooperation in Public Goods Games on Randomly Growing Dynamic Networks

According to evolutionary game theory, cooperation in public goods games is eliminated by free-riders, yet in nature, cooperation is ubiquitous. Artificial models resolve this contradiction via the mechanism of network reciprocity. However, existing research only addresses pre-existing networks and does not specifically consider their origins. Further, much work has focused on scale-free networks and so pre-supposes attachment mechanisms which may not exist in nature. We present a coevolutionary model of public goods games in networks, growing by random attachment, from small founding populations of simple agents. The model demonstrates the emergence of cooperation in moderately heterogeneous networks, regardless of original founders' behaviour, and absent higher cognitive abilities such as recognition or memory. It may thus illustrate a more general mechanism for the evolution of cooperation, from early origins, in minimally cognitive organisms. It is the first example of a model explaining cooperation in public goods games on growing networks.

[1]  Attila Szolnoki,et al.  Reward and cooperation in the spatial public goods game , 2010, ArXiv.

[2]  Steve Miller,et al.  Population Fluctuation Promotes Cooperation in Networks , 2014, Scientific Reports.

[3]  C. Hauert,et al.  Punishment and reputation in spatial public goods games , 2003, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[4]  Attila Szolnoki,et al.  Evolutionary dynamics of group interactions on structured populations: a review , 2013, Journal of The Royal Society Interface.

[5]  F. C. Santos,et al.  Social diversity promotes the emergence of cooperation in public goods games , 2008, Nature.

[6]  Evelyn Fox Keller,et al.  Revisiting "scale-free" networks. , 2005, BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology.

[7]  B. Crespi The evolution of social behavior in microorganisms. , 2001, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[8]  Steve Miller,et al.  A Minimal Model for the Emergence of Cooperation in Randomly Growing Networks , 2015, ECAL.

[9]  G. Szabó,et al.  Evolutionary games on graphs , 2006, cond-mat/0607344.

[10]  Attila Szolnoki,et al.  Coevolutionary Games - A Mini Review , 2009, Biosyst..

[11]  Yamir Moreno,et al.  Complex Cooperative Networks from Evolutionary Preferential Attachment , 2008, PloS one.

[12]  C. Hauert,et al.  Volunteering as Red Queen Mechanism for Cooperation in Public Goods Games , 2002, Science.

[13]  F. C. Santos,et al.  A new route to the evolution of cooperation , 2006, Journal of evolutionary biology.

[14]  P. Richerson,et al.  The evolution of reciprocity in sizable groups. , 1988, Journal of theoretical biology.

[15]  G. Hardin,et al.  The Tragedy of the Commons , 1968, Green Planet Blues.

[16]  M. Nowak,et al.  Evolutionary games and spatial chaos , 1992, Nature.

[17]  Mark E. J. Newman,et al.  Power-Law Distributions in Empirical Data , 2007, SIAM Rev..

[18]  W. Hamilton,et al.  The Evolution of Cooperation , 1984 .