Coevolutionary dynamics of feedback-evolving games in structured populations

Wang, Qiushuang and Chen, Xiaojie and Szolnoki, Attila (2025) Coevolutionary dynamics of feedback-evolving games in structured populations. CHAOS SOLITONS & FRACTALS, 193. No.-116070. ISSN 0960-0779

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Abstract

The interdependence between an individual strategy decision and the resulting change of environmental state is often a subtle process. Feedback-evolving games have been a prevalent framework for studying such feedback in well-mixed populations, yielding important insights into the coevolutionary dynamics. However, since real populations are usually structured, it is essential to explore how population structure affects such coevolutionary dynamics. Our work proposes a coevolution model of strategies and environmental state in a structured population depicted by a regular graph. We investigate the system dynamics, and theoretically demonstrate that there exist different evolutionary outcomes including oscillation, bistability, the coexistence of oscillation and dominance, as well as the coexistence of cooperation and defection. Our theoretical predictions are validated through numerical calculations. By using Monte Carlo simulations we examine how the number of neighbors influences the coevolutionary dynamics, particularly the size of the attractive domain of the replete environmental state in the cases of bistability or cooperation-defection coexistence. Specifically, in the case of bistability, a larger neighborhood size may be beneficial to save the environment when the environmental enhancement rate by cooperation/degradation rate by defection is high. Conversely, if this ratio is low, a smaller neighborhood size is more beneficial. In the case of cooperator-defector coexistence, environmental maintenance is basically influenced by individual payoffs. When the ratio of temptation minus reward versus punishment minus sucker’s payoff is high, a larger neighborhood size is more favorable. In contrast, when the mentioned ratio is low, a smaller neighborhood size is more advantageous.

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