I'd be very grateful if you could point me to game theory applications in evolution. I'm aware of a hawk-and-pigeon model, described by Dawkins in "Selfish Gene", and of its more slightly more sophisticated versions, but, because of my interest in GT, I'd like to find something more advanced/less known/et cetera. Thanks. Should I turn to classics, like Hamilton, and hiss evolutionary-stable- strategy idea? How difficult his writings are to understand for somebody with interest in GT, but with just a little knowledge about biology and evolution?
(I'm sorry if the exact names of models or books vary from original ones; I'm not a native english speaker and I may be mistranslating them. Hope you get the point, tho. 🙂 )
-- _-(_)- _-(_)- _-(_)- _-("😉- _-(_)- _-(_)- _-(_)- `(___) `(___) `(___) `%%%%% `(___) `(___) `(___) jgs // \\ // \\ // \\ // \\ // \\ // \\ // \\ Who's the black sheep in the family?
I'd be very grateful if you could point me to game theory applications in evolution.
The problem is that games are theoretical constructs that don't map obviously to real organisms. One factor is that games suppose a "currency", but we don't generally know how valuable a grain of feed is to a pigeon, for example. (If it's a lab pigeon then it is guaranteed not to be starved to death anyway, so the survival value of food is zero. However pigeons probably don't know this.)
Guppies will inspect predators, to assess whether they are hungry and thus a threat. If two guppies are in a group, then this creates a game similar to "prisoner's dilemma". The theoretical best strategy is "[censored] for tat", though there's some argument about this. However attempts to match the actual behaviour of guppies up to "[censored] for tat" haven't proved too successful.
I'd be very grateful if you could point me to game theory applications in evolution. I'm aware of a hawk-and-pigeon model, described by Dawkins in "Selfish Gene", and of its more slightly more sophisticated versions, but, because of my interest in GT, I'd like to find something more advanced/less known/et cetera. Thanks. Should I turn to classics, like Hamilton, and hiss evolutionary-stable- strategy idea? How difficult his writings are to understand for somebody with interest in GT, but with just a little knowledge about biology and evolution?
(I'm sorry if the exact names of models or books vary from original ones; I'm not a native english speaker and I may be mistranslating them. Hope you get the point, tho. 🙂 )
The classic is Maynard Smith's "Evolution and the Theory of Games", from 1982. IIRC, it doesn't need too deep a knowledge of biology. Of course, it's now about 20 years out of date, so you should be able to find a more recent textbook. However, the more recent stuff builds on this work, so it's still useful.
Bob
-- Bob O'Hara
Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics P.O. Box 4 (Yliopistonkatu 5) FIN-00014 University of Helsinki Finland Telephone: +358-9-191 23743 Mobile: +358 50 599 0540 Fax: +358-9-191 22 779 WWW: rni.helsinki.fi~bohOpen ↗ Journal of Negative Results - EEB: jnr-eeb.orgjnr-eeb.orgOpen ↗
The problem is that games are theoretical constructs that don't map obviously to real organisms. One factor is that games suppose a "currency", but we don't generally know how valuable a grain of feed is to a pigeon, for example.
Well, it's not important how valuable it is, by which I mean that you don't have to measure it in any units. You rather need to know only whether action A is more valuable to pigeon than action B to hawk. Which is not simple at all to estimate, but, I think, not impossible to do too. It's just the same thing as with "Utility" idea in economic sciences.
Thanks for answering.
-- _-(_)- _-(_)- _-(_)- _-("😉- _-(_)- _-(_)- _-(_)- `(___) `(___) `(___) `%%%%% `(___) `(___) `(___) jgs // \\ // \\ // \\ // \\ // \\ // \\ // \\ Who's the black sheep in the family?
The problem is that games are theoretical constructs that don't map obviously to real organisms. One factor is that games suppose a "currency", but we don't generally know how valuable a grain of feed is to a pigeon, for example.
Well, it's not important how valuable it is, by which I mean that you don't have to measure it in any units. You rather need to know only whether action A is more valuable to pigeon than action B to hawk. Which is not simple at all to estimate, but, I think, not impossible to do too. It's just the same thing as with "Utility" idea in economic sciences.
Actually, there is a clear utility in the case of evolution: fitness. This is one of the reasons why game theory works so well.
Of course, estimating the fitness is another matter, but yes there are ways of doing that too - if you can fin a copy of Manly's book "The Statistics of Natural Selection", then you'll see a host of methods (and there have been more developments in the last 20 years, too).
Bob
-- Bob O'Hara Department of Mathematics and Statistics P.O. Box 4 (Yliopistonkatu 5) FIN-00014 University of Helsinki Finland Telephone: +358-9-191 23743 Mobile: +358 50 599 0540 Fax: +358-9-191 22 779 WWW: rni.helsinki.fi~bohOpen ↗ Journal of Negative Results - EEB: www.jnr-eeb.org
The classic is Maynard Smith's "Evolution and the Theory of Games", from 1982. IIRC, it doesn't need too deep a knowledge of biology. Of course, it's now about 20 years out of date, so you should be able to find a more recent textbook. However, the more recent stuff builds on this work, so it's still useful.
Maynard Smith's book is still in print, but he also has a new book: "Animal Signals" by him and David Harper, (Oxford University Press 2003, 24.95 UK pounds paperback) which he says is in effect a new edition of the game theory book.
-- Joe Felsenstein [email hidden] Department of Genome Sciences and Department of Biology, University of Washington, Box 357730, Seattle, WA 98195-7730 USA
Of course, estimating the fitness is another matter, but yes there are ways of doing that too - if you can fin a copy of Manly's book "The >
Statistics of Natural Selection", then you'll see a host of methods
Quoted message said:
(and there have been more developments in the last 20 years, too).
The problem is your estimates have got to be quite good. For instance if a chick is going to leave a worm to a weaker nestmate, rather than eat it itself, then the worm should be exactly twice as valuable to the nestmate than to itself, assuming the same paternity, and adjusted if there are cases of the clutch being fathered by more than one male. The complication is that, to the mother, both chicks are of equal genetic value, but the stronger one is probably a better bet, because survival is usually quite low. Mother can impose costs on a chick grabbing more than its fair share of food, but we've got see whether she actually does so, and then see if we can measure these as well. All in all its very difficult to disentagle what is going on with the chicks' feeding strategies.
Actually, there is a clear utility in the case of evolution: fitness. This is one of the reasons why game theory works so well.
I have just finished reading "Extended Phenotype" by Dawkins, so I'd like to ask, which meaning of fitness you are talking about -- since he presented five different intepretations of this word. I guess it's not the strict genetic meaning (How much, relatively, of different alleles are passed to next generations), since fitness in this definition would be quite easy to measure (I think).
-- _-(_)- _-(_)- _-(_)- _-("😉- _-(_)- _-(_)- _-(_)- `(___) `(___) `(___) `%%%%% `(___) `(___) `(___) jgs // \\ // \\ // \\ // \\ // \\ // \\ // \\ Who's the black sheep in the family?
