Physica A 444 (2016) 566–575
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physica A
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/physa
Evolution of cooperation in spatial iterated Prisoner’s
Dilemma games under localized extremal dynamics
Zhen Wang
a,b,∗
, Chao Yu
c
, Guang-Hai Cui
a,d
, Ya-Peng Li
e
, Ming-Chu Li
a
a
School of Software, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116621, China
b
School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 639798, Singapore
c
School of Computer Science and Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China
d
School of Information Science and Engineering, Ludong University, Yantai 264025, China
e
School of Innovation Experiment, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China
h i g h l i g h t s
• A novel localized extremal dynamics for Spatial IPD game is proposed, in which players interact with limited vision.
• The evolution of cooperation under this updating rule for different sizes of neighborhoods is extensively explored.
• Cooperation is optimally enhanced along with the system evolves to a TFT-like state when interact radius r = 2.
• Various evolution processes could be distinguished by the number of active players and their ability to form joint clusters.
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 7 July 2015
Received in revised form 21 September
2015
Available online 21 October 2015
Keywords:
Extremal dynamics
Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma
Spatial game
Cooperation
a b s t r a c t
The spatial Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game has been widely studied in order to explain
the evolution of cooperation. Considering the large strategy space size and infinite
interaction times, it is unrealistic to adopt the common imitate-best updating rule, which
assumes that the human players have much stronger abilities to recognize their neighbors’
strategies than they do in the one-shot game. In this paper, a novel localized extremal
dynamic system is proposed, in which each player only needs to recognize the payoff of
his neighbors and changes his strategy randomly when he receives the lowest payoff in his
neighborhood. The evolution of cooperation is here explored under this updating rule for
neighborhoods of different sizes, which are characterized by their corresponding radiuses r.
The results show that when r = 1, the system is trapped in a checkerboard-like state,
where half of the players consistently use AllD-like strategies and the other half constantly
change their strategies. When r = 2, the system first enters an AllD-like state, from which
it escapes, and finally evolves to a TFT-like state. When r is larger, the system locks in a
situation with similar low average fitness as r = 1. The number of active players and the
ability to form clusters jointly distinguish the evolutionary processes for different values
of r from each other. The current findings further provide some insight into the evolution
of cooperation and collective behavior in biological and social systems.
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
∗
Corresponding author at: School of Software, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116621, China.
E-mail addresses: wangz@dlut.edu.cn (Z. Wang), cy496@dlut.edu.cn (C. Yu), mingchul@dlut.edu.cn (M.-C. Li).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2015.10.015
0378-4371/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.