title: Crucial role of strategy updating for coexistence of strategies in interaction networks.
abstract: Network models are useful tools for studying the dynamics of social interactions in a structured population. After a round of interactions with the players in their local neighborhood, players update their strategy based on the comparison of their own payoff with the payoff of one of their neighbors. Here we show that the assumptions made on strategy updating are of crucial importance for the strategy dynamics. In the first step, we demonstrate that seemingly small deviations from the standard assumptions on updating have major implications for the evolutionary outcome of two cooperation games: cooperation can more easily persist in a Prisoner's Dilemma game, while it can go more easily extinct in a Snowdrift game. To explain these outcomes, we develop a general model for the updating of states in a network that allows us to derive conditions for the steady-state coexistence of states (or strategies). The analysis reveals that coexistence crucially depends on the number of agents consulted for updating. We conclude that updating rules are as important for evolution on a network as network structure and the nature of the interaction.
authors.affiliation: Network Analysis and Control Group, Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen, University of Groningen, 9747 AG, Groningen, The Netherlands.|Theoretical Biology Group, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, 9747 AG, Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Jianlei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: College of Computer and Control Engineering, Nankai University, 300071, Tianjin, China.
authors.forename: Chunyan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Network Analysis and Control Group, Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen, University of Groningen, 9747 AG, Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Biology Group, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, 9747 AG, Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Franz J
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Weissing
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D005716:Game Theory; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D000068956:Prisoner Dilemma