Bayesian ecoevolutionary game dynamics.

Abstract

The symbiotic relationship between the frameworks of classical game theory and evolutionary game theory is well established. However, evolutionary game theorists have mostly tapped into the classical game of complete information where players are completely informed of all other players' payoffs. Of late, there is a surge of interest in ecoevolutionary interactions where the environment's state is changed by the players' actions which, in turn, are influenced by the changing environment. However, in real life, the information about the true environmental state must pass through some noisy channel (like the usually imperfect sensory apparatus of the players) before it is perceived by the players: The players naturally are prone to sometimes perceive the true state erroneously. Given the uncertain perceived environment, the players may adopt bet-hedging kind of strategies in which they play different actions in different perceptions. In a population of such ill-informed players, a player would be confused about the information state of her opponent, and an incomplete information situation akin to a Bayesian game surfaces. In short, we contemplate the possibility of the natural emergence of the symbiotic relationship between the frameworks of Bayesian games and ecoevolutionary games when the players are equipped with inefficient sensory apparatus. Herein, we illustrate this connection using a setup of infinitely large, well-mixed population of players equipped with two actions for exploiting a resource (the environment) at two different rates so that the resource state evolves accordingly. The state of the resource impacts every player's decision of playing particular action. We investigate the continuous state environment in the presence of a Gaussian noisy channel. Employing the formalism of deterministic replicator dynamics, we find that noisy information can be effective in preventing the resource from going extinct.