Chapter 28 Game theory and evolutionary biology The subject matter of evolutionary game theory is the analysis of conflict and cooperation in animals and plants. Originally game theory was developed as a theory of human strategic behavior based on an idealized picture of rational decision making. Evolutionary game theory does not rely on rationality assumptions but on the idea that the Darwinian process of natural selection drives organisms toward the optimization of reproductive success. Most of evolutionary game theory focuses on those cases where stable equilibrium is reached. However the dynamics of evolutionary processes in disequilibrium is also an active area of research. In principle evolutionary game theory deals only with fully symmetric games. Asymmetric conflicts are embedded in symmetric games where each player has the same chance to be on each side of the conflict. The mathematical definition of evolutionary stability refers to symmetric games only. Because asymmetric conflicts can be embedded in symmetric games this is no obstacle for the treatment of asymmetric conflicts.