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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on April 28, 2006
Behavioral Ecology 2006 17(4):633-641; doi:10.1093/beheco/ark009
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Asynchronous snowdrift game with synergistic effect as a model of cooperation

Ádám Kuna,b, Gergely Bozaa and István Scheuringc

a Department of Plant Taxonomy and Ecology, Eötvös University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary, b Collegium Budapest, Institute for Advanced Study, Szentháromság u. 2, H-1014 Budapest, Hungary, and c Department of Plant Taxonomy and Ecology, Research Group of Ecology and Theoretical Biology, Eötvös University, Hungarian Academy of Science, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary

Address correspondence to Á. Kun. E-mail: kunadam{at}ludens.elte.hu.

The snowdrift (or chicken) game emerges as a new paradigm in the study of nonkin cooperation in animals. Many situations, for example, cooperative hunting, group foraging, territorial defense, predator watching, or parental care, can be adequately described as a snowdrift game. In this paper, we investigate the asynchronous version of the game in which, contrary to the rather unrealistic assumption of simultaneous moves, one of the players acts first and the other responds by knowing its decision. Players are assigned to be first or second movers randomly and with the same probability. We found that both a synergistic effect of cooperation (i.e., cooperative effort is better than the sum of the individual efforts) and population structure (low dispersal, spatial confinement, or group formation) are crucial for mutual cooperation to emerge. Otherwise, only one of the players will carry the burden of cooperation.

Key words: chicken game, cooperation, game theory, snowdrift game.


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[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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