Costly Advertising and the Evolution of Cooperation

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 8; no. 7; p. e67056
• Main Author: Brede, Markus
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 08.07.2013; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Advertising; Behavior evolution; Biological Evolution; Biology; Computer Science; Computer Simulation; Cooperation; Cooperative Behavior; Defections; Defects; Evolution; Game Theory; Heterogeneity; Humans; Mathematics; Numerical analysis; Numerical simulations; Phase transitions; Political asylum; Populations; Strategy; Studies; Teaching
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0067056

In this paper, I investigate the co-evolution of fast and slow strategy spread and game strategies in populations of spatially distributed agents engaged in a one off evolutionary dilemma game. Agents are characterized by a pair of traits, a game strategy (cooperate or defect) and a binary 'advertising' strategy (advertise or don't advertise). Advertising, which comes at a cost [Formula: see text], allows investment into faster propagation of the agents' traits to adjacent individuals. Importantly, game strategy and advertising strategy are subject to the same evolutionary mechanism. Via analytical reasoning and numerical simulations I demonstrate that a range of advertising costs exists, such that the prevalence of cooperation is significantly enhanced through co-evolution. Linking costly replication to the success of cooperators exposes a novel co-evolutionary mechanism that might contribute towards a better understanding of the origins of cooperation-supporting heterogeneity in agent populations.