Evolution and the Theory of Games

The last decade has seen a steady increase in the application of concepts from the theory of games to the study of evolution. Fields as diverse as sex ratio theory, animal distribution, contest behaviour and reciprocal altruism have contributed to what is now emerging as a universal way of thinking about phenotypic evolution. This book attempts to present these ideas in a coherent form. It is addressed primarily to biologists. I have therefore been more concerned to explain and to illustrate how the theory can be applied to biological problems than to present formal mathematical proofs – a task for which I am, in any case, ill equipped. Some idea of how the mathematical side of the subject has developed is given in the appendixes.

I hope the book will also be of some interest to game theorists. Paradoxically, it has turned out that game theory is more readily applied to biology than to the field of economic behaviour for which it was originally designed. There are two reasons for this. First, the theory requires that the values of different outcomes (for example, financial rewards, the risks of death and the pleasures of a clear conscience) be measured on a single scale. In human applications, this measure is provided by ‘utility’ – a somewhat artificial and uncomfortable concept: in biology, Darwinian fitness provides a natural and genuinely one-dimensional scale.