page_title: Evolutionary game theory
section_title: Extending the model
hierarchical_section_title: Evolutionary game theory / Extending the model
caption_attribution_description: English: An example of spacial dynamics in Evolutionary Game Theory
context_page_description: Evolutionary game theory is the application of game theory to evolving populations in biology. It defines a framework of contests, strategies, and analytics into which Darwinian competition can be modelled. It originated in 1973 with John Maynard Smith and George R. Price's formalisation of contests, analysed as strategies, and the mathematical criteria that can be used to predict the results of competing strategies.
  Evolutionary game theory differs from classical game theory in focusing more on the dynamics of strategy change. This is influenced by the frequency of the competing strategies in the population.
  Evolutionary game theory has helped to explain the basis of altruistic behaviours in Darwinian evolution. It has in turn become of interest to economists, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers.
context_section_description: A mathematical model analysing the behaviour of a system needs initially to be as simple as possible to aid in developing a base understanding the fundamentals, or “first order effects”, pertaining to what is being studied.  With this understanding in place it is then appropriate to see if other, more subtle, parameters (second order effects) further impact the primary behaviours or shape additional behaviours in the system.   Following Maynard Smith's seminal work in evolutionary game theory, the subject has had a number of very significant extensions which have shed more light on understanding evolutionary dynamics, particularly in the area of altruistic behaviors.  Some of these key extensions to evolutionary game theory are:
caption: A Spatial Game
  In a spatial evolutionary game contestants meet in contests at fixed grid positions and only interact with immediate neighbors. Shown here are the dynamics of a Hawk Dove contest, showing Hawk and Dove contestants as well as the changes of strategy taking place in the various cells