2008/11/30 by Attila Szolnoki, Matjaž Perc, Zsuzsa Danku · 3 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
paper · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/84/50007
openalex publication_date 2008/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game is studied where initially all players are linked via a regular graph, having four neighbors each. Simultaneously with the strategy evolution, players are allowed to make new connections and thus permanently extend their neighborhoods, provided they have been successful in passing their strategy to the opponents. We show that this simple coevolutionary rule shifts the survival barrier of cooperators towards high temptations to defect and results in highly heterogeneous interaction networks with an exponential fit best characterizing their degree distributions. In particular, there exist an optimal maximal degree for the promotion of cooperation, warranting the best exchange of information between influential players.