Models
It is important to realize that EGT is not just a specialist mathematical treatment of animal contests to determine their dynamics and results, but in a manner similar to the field of Evolutionary Algorithms, it is a comprehensive model that encompasses the Darwinian process itself – including the central tenets of competition (the game) natural selection (replicator dynamics) and heredity - all within the overall model. Therefore it is a major vehicle to help understand and explain some of the most fundamental questions in biology including the issue of group selection, sexual selection, altruism, parental care, co evolution, and ecological dynamics. Much of the progress in developing understanding in these diverse areas has been aided by Evolutionary Game Theory modelling and many of the counter intuitive situations in these areas have been explained and put on a firm mathematical footing by the use of these models.
The common methodology to study the evolutionary dynamics in games is through replicator equations. These replicator equations in the context of evolutionary biology shows the growth rate of the proportion of organisms using a certain strategy and that rate is equal to the difference between the average payoff of that strategy and the average payoff of the population as a whole. Continuous replicator equations assume infinite populations, continuous time, complete mixing and that strategies breed true. The attractors (stable fixed points) of the equations are equivalent with evolutionarily stable states. A strategy which can survive all "mutant" strategies is considered evolutionary stable. In the context of animal behavior, this usually means such strategies are programmed and heavily influenced by genetics, thus making any player or organism's strategy determined by these biological factors.
Read more about this topic: Evolutionary Game Theory
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