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Free keywords:
many-player game theory; multiple strategies; coalescence theory; abundance
Abstract:
Evolutionary game theory is an abstract and simple, but very powerful way to model evolutionary dynamics. Even complex biological phenomena can sometimes be abstracted to simple two-player games. But often, the interaction between several parties determines evolutionary success. Rather than pair-wise interactions, in this case we must take into account the interactions between manyp layers, which are inherently more complicated than the usual two-player games, butcan still yield simple results. In this manuscript we derive the composition of a many-player multiple strategy system in the mutation–selection equilibrium. This results in a simple expression which can be obtained by recursions using coalescence theory. This approach can be modified to suit a variety of contexts, e.g. to find the equilibrium frequencies of a finite number of alleles in a polymorphism or that of different strategies in a social dilemma in a cultural context.