Evolutionary Games on Graphs and Discrete Dynamical Systems

Abstract

Evolutionary games on graphs play an important role in the study of evolution of cooperation in applied biology. Using rigorous mathematical concepts from a dynamical systems and graph theoretical point of view, we formalize the notions of attractor, update rules and update orders. We prove results on attractors for different utility functions and update orders. For complete graphs we characterize attractors for synchronous and sequential update rules. In other cases (for $k$-regular graphs or for different update orders) we provide sufficient conditions for attractivity of full cooperation and full defection. We construct examples to show that these conditions are not necessary. Finally, by formulating a list of open questions we emphasize the advantages of our rigorous approach.