Evolution and the Theory of Games¶
Maynard Smith, J. (1982). Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge University Press.
Cited by¶
7 citations across 7 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Anti-Coordination Game
- Hawk-Dove, niche partitioning, Hotelling location choice, the CSMA protocol family, and Fisher's sex-ratio argument are all instances of the same anti-coordination logic applied to different substrates.
This sourceSystematic development of the ESS, the Hawk-Dove payoff matrix and mixed equilibrium p* = V/C, and the Bourgeois convention (play Hawk if owner, Dove if intruder) as an uncorrelated-asymmetry symmetry-breaker.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
The abstract grounds ESS and frequency-dependent game theory for behaviour and sex, supporting at most the Hawk-Dove member of the list, not the five-way anti-coordination equivalence.
“John Maynard Smith's concept of an evolutionarily stable strategy is relevant whenever the best thing for an animal or plant to do depends on what others are doing. The theory leads to testable predictions about the evolution of behaviour, of sex and genetic systems”
- Hawk-Dove, niche partitioning, Hotelling location choice, the CSMA protocol family, and Fisher's sex-ratio argument are all instances of the same anti-coordination logic applied to different substrates.
- Arbitrage (Generalized)
- Maynard Smith (1982) further shows in his evolutionary game-theoretic analysis that frequency-dependent fitness creates niche-occupation arbitrage—agents profit by pursuing strategies whose payoff is highest where competitors are absent.
This sourceFrequency-dependent selection and ESS analysis show that fitness payoffs depend on the strategy distribution; agents profit by occupying niches where competitors are absent—biological arbitrage as niche-finding.
- Maynard Smith (1982) further shows in his evolutionary game-theoretic analysis that frequency-dependent fitness creates niche-occupation arbitrage—agents profit by pursuing strategies whose payoff is highest where competitors are absent.
- Evolutionarily Stable Strategy
- Animals contest a resource of value \(V\); a Hawk escalates and risks injury cost \(C\), a Dove displays and retreats.
This sourceDevelops the Hawk–Dove game, derives the mixed ESS playing Hawk with probability V/C, and establishes the ESS-vs-Nash refinement.
- Animals contest a resource of value \(V\); a Hawk escalates and risks injury cost \(C\), a Dove displays and retreats.
- Livelock
- Ecology and behaviour — ritualised symmetric display contests; cyclic multi-species dynamics with no monotonic progress on a state variable that ordinarily would move.
This sourceRitualized symmetric display contests and evolutionarily stable strategies in animal conflict.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
The book's abstract supplies the evolutionarily-stable-strategy frame for animal conflict and the evolution of behaviour, but says nothing about ritualised display contests or multispecies cyclic dynamics.
“John Maynard Smith's concept of an evolutionarily stable strategy is relevant whenever the best thing for an animal or plant to do depends on what others are doing.”
- Ecology and behaviour — ritualised symmetric display contests; cyclic multi-species dynamics with no monotonic progress on a state variable that ordinarily would move.
- Nash Equilibrium
- Evolutionary biology — the evolutionarily stable strategy is a Refinement of Nash for evolutionary dynamics, stable against invasion by mutant strategies; it explains hawk-dove balances, stable sex ratios, and mixed foraging strategies.
This sourceDevelops the evolutionarily stable strategy as a Nash refinement for population dynamics, explaining hawk-dove balances, stable sex ratios, and mixed strategies, and grounding adversarial/population game analysis.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
The publisher abstract supports ESS as Maynard Smith's concept applied to evolving populations with behavioural and sex-system predictions, but states neither the Nash-refinement relation nor the hawk-dove and mixed-foraging examples.
“John Maynard Smith's concept of an evolutionarily stable strategy is relevant whenever the best thing for an animal or plant to do depends on what others are doing.”
- Evolutionary biology — the evolutionarily stable strategy is a Refinement of Nash for evolutionary dynamics, stable against invasion by mutant strategies; it explains hawk-dove balances, stable sex ratios, and mixed foraging strategies.
Domain-specific¶
- Fisher's Principle (Sex-Ratio Equilibrium)
- This argument can be read game-theoretically — Fisher did not state it in those terms — and is recognised in hindsight as an early instance of what Maynard Smith would later formalize as an evolutionarily stable strategy: a population composition that cannot be invaded by any mutant strategy
This sourceMaynard Smith's formalisation of the evolutionarily stable strategy — the uninvadability condition this sentence paraphrases. The retrospective placing of Fisher's sex-ratio argument as an early instance of one, and the observation that Fisher did not frame it game-theoretically, are not sourced to this book.
Supported in partVerified against the source
- This argument can be read game-theoretically — Fisher did not state it in those terms — and is recognised in hindsight as an early instance of what Maynard Smith would later formalize as an evolutionarily stable strategy: a population composition that cannot be invaded by any mutant strategy
- Mixed Strategy Equilibrium
- Game theory and economics — the native home: the central solution concept for finite games without pure equilibria, underpinning mechanism design, auction theory, and industrial organization. Security and inspection games — tax audits, customs inspections, drug testing, and patrol scheduling use randomized schedules whose equilibrium proportions deny an adversary an exploitable target. Sports tactics — tennis serve direction and soccer penalty-kick splits, where professional play empirically approximates the computed mixing proportions (Walker & Wooders 2001; Chiappori, Levitt & Groseclose 2002). Poker and imperfect-information solvers — optimal bluff-versus-value frequencies, with CFR algorithms explicitly computing mixed equilibria in extensive-form games. Military, intelligence, and cybersecurity — route, key, and configuration randomization, including moving-target defense, structured so predictability cannot be exploited. Evolutionary biology — the Hawk–Dove evolutionarily stable strategy (fraction V/C Hawks) and alternative reproductive tactics realize mixed equilibria as population polymorphisms.
This sourceGives the Hawk–Dove evolutionarily stable strategy as a stable genetic polymorphism with a frequency of V/C pure Hawks.
Supported in partVerified against a saved copy of the source
“a frequency of p={{{V/C}}} of pure {{{Hawk}}} is stable.”
- Game theory and economics — the native home: the central solution concept for finite games without pure equilibria, underpinning mechanism design, auction theory, and industrial organization. Security and inspection games — tax audits, customs inspections, drug testing, and patrol scheduling use randomized schedules whose equilibrium proportions deny an adversary an exploitable target. Sports tactics — tennis serve direction and soccer penalty-kick splits, where professional play empirically approximates the computed mixing proportions (Walker & Wooders 2001; Chiappori, Levitt & Groseclose 2002). Poker and imperfect-information solvers — optimal bluff-versus-value frequencies, with CFR algorithms explicitly computing mixed equilibria in extensive-form games. Military, intelligence, and cybersecurity — route, key, and configuration randomization, including moving-target defense, structured so predictability cannot be exploited. Evolutionary biology — the Hawk–Dove evolutionarily stable strategy (fraction V/C Hawks) and alternative reproductive tactics realize mixed equilibria as population polymorphisms.
Verification¶
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Links previously used in the corpus¶
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