Resolving social dilemmas on evolving random networks

¹  Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science - P.O. Box 49, H-1525 Budapest, Hungary, EU
²  Department of Physics, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Maribor Koroška cesta 160, SI-2000 Maribor, Slovenia, EU

Received: 23 February 2009
Accepted: 20 April 2009

Abstract

We show that strategy-independent adaptations of random interaction networks can induce powerful mechanisms, ranging from the Red Queen to group selection, which promote cooperation in evolutionary social dilemmas. These two mechanisms emerge spontaneously as dynamical processes due to deletions and additions of links, which are performed whenever players adopt new strategies and after a certain number of game iterations, respectively. The potency of cooperation promotion, as well as the mechanism responsible for it, can thereby be tuned via a single parameter determining the frequency of link additions. We thus demonstrate that coevolving random networks may evoke an appropriate mechanism for each social dilemma, such that cooperation prevails even in highly unfavorable conditions.