The donation game with roles played between relatives

James A.R. Marshall (1)

1 Department of Computer Science

We consider a social game with two choices, played between two relatives, where roles are assigned to individuals so that the interaction is asymmetric. Behaviour in each of the two roles is determined by a separate genetic locus. Such asymmetric interactions between relatives, in which individuals occupy different behavioural contexts, may occur in nature, for example between adult parents and juvenile offspring. The social game considered is known to be equivalent to a donation game with non-additive payoffs, and has previously been analysed for the single locus case, both for discrete and continuous strategy traits. We present an inclusive fitness analysis of the discrete trait game with roles and recover equilibrium conditions including fixation of selfish or altruistic behaviour under both behavioural contexts, or fixation of selfish behaviour under one context and altruistic behaviour under the other context. These equilibrium solutions assume that the payoff matrices under each behavioural context are identical. The equilibria possible do depend crucially, however, on the deviation from payoff additivity that occurs when both interacting individuals act altruistically.

Mots clés: Evolutionary game theory; 2 x 2 games; Kin selection; Donation game; Synergistic effect

James A.R. Marshall. The donation game with roles played between relatives. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 2009, 260 (3), pp.386. ⟨10.1016/j.jtbi.2009.07.008⟩. ⟨hal-00559144⟩