Evolutionary Game Theory - Rock Scissors Paper Game - RPS and Ecology

RPS and Ecology

Rock Scissors Paper is an evolutionary games that also helps to develop an understanding of Ecology. In two strategy “pairwise” contests the outcome in most contests is that one strategy dominates the population and the dynamic reaches a static ESS point. This means in ecological terms, where it is species that compete with one another, that one particular species in these pairwise contests tends to dominate a particular ecological niche. Most ecologies however are built up of multiple species (each successful in a separate niche), in intertwined or “intransitive” relationships, where each species benefits indirectly from a competition taking place between two other species, and where many species populations co-exist with a degree of cycling. These multi species ecologies have been modelled by game-theoretic analysis based on the Rock Scissors Paper game and results have been shown to produce dynamics that closely match with ecological systems in nature.