Evolutionary dynamics of complex multiple games

Abstract

Evolutionary game theory has been successful in describing phenomena from bacterial population dynamics to the evolution of social behaviour. However, it has typically focused on a single game describing the interactions between individuals. Organisms are simultaneously involved in many intraspecies and interspecies interactions. Therefore, there is a need to move from single games to multiple games. However, these interactions in nature involve many players. Shifting from 2-player games to multiple multiplayer games yield richer dynamics closer to natural settings. Such a complete picture of multiple game dynamics (MGD), where multiple players are involved, was lacking. For multiple multiplayer games—where each game could have an arbitrary finite number of players and strategies, we provide a replicator equation for MGD having many players and strategies. We show that if the individual games involved have more than two strategies, then the combined dynamics cannot be understood by looking only at individual games. Expected dynamics from single games is no longer valid, and trajectories can possess different limiting behaviour. In the case of finite populations, we formulate and calculate an essential and useful stochastic property, fixation probability. Our results highlight that studying a set of interactions defined by a single game can be misleading if we do not take the broader setting of the interactions into account. Through our results and analysis, we thus discuss and advocate the development of evolutionary game(s) theory, which will help us disentangle the complexity of multiple interactions.