Networking effects on cooperation in evolutionary snowdrift game

Abstract

The effects of networking on the extent of cooperation emerging in a\ncompetitive setting are studied. The evolutionary snowdrift game, which\nrepresents a realistic alternative to the well-known Prisoner's Dilemma, is\nstudied in the Watts-Strogatz network that spans the regular, small-world, and\nrandom networks through random re-wiring. Over a wide range of payoffs, a\nre-wired network is found to suppress cooperation when compared with a\nwell-mixed or fully connected system. Two extinction payoffs, that characterize\nthe emergence of a homogeneous steady state, are identified. It is found that,\nunlike in the Prisoner's Dilemma, the standard deviation of the degree\ndistribution is the dominant network property that governs the extinction\npayoffs.\n