Zero-one survival behavior of cyclically competing species

Saddles, arrows, and spirals: deterministic trajectories in cyclic competition of four species

Population dynamics in systems composed of cyclically competing species has been of increasing interest recently. Here we investigate a system with four or more species. Using mean field theory, we study in detail the trajectories in configuration space of the population fractions. We discover a variety of orbits, shaped like saddles, spirals, and straight lines. Many of their properties are found explicitly. Most remarkably, we identify a collective variable that evolves simply as an exponential: Q ∝ e(λt), where λ is a function of the reaction rates. It provides information on the state of the system for late times (as well as for t→-∞). We discuss implications of these results for the evolution of a finite, stochastic system. A generalization to an arbitrary number of cyclically competing species yields valuable insights into universal properties of such systems.

Phase diagrams for the spatial public goods game with pool punishment

The efficiency of institutionalized punishment is studied by evaluating the stationary states in the spatial public goods game comprising unconditional defectors, cooperators, and cooperating pool punishers as the three competing strategies. Fines and costs of pool punishment are considered as the two main parameters determining the stationary distributions of strategies on the square lattice. Each player collects a payoff from five five-person public goods games, and the evolution of strategies is subsequently governed by imitation based on pairwise comparisons at a low level of noise. The impact of pool punishment on the evolution of cooperation in structured populations is significantly different from that reported previously for peer punishment. Representative phase diagrams reveal remarkably rich behavior, depending also on the value of the synergy factor that characterizes the efficiency of investments payed into the common pool. Besides traditional single- and two-strategy stationary states, a rock-paper-scissors type of cyclic dominance can emerge in strikingly different ways.

Basins of coexistence and extinction in spatially extended ecosystems of cyclically competing species

Microscopic models based on evolutionary games on spatially extended scales have recently been developed to address the fundamental issue of species coexistence. In this pursuit almost all existing works focus on the relevant dynamical behaviors originated from a single but physically reasonable initial condition. To gain comprehensive and global insights into the dynamics of coexistence, here we explore the basins of coexistence and extinction and investigate how they evolve as a basic parameter of the system is varied. Our model is cyclic competitions among three species as described by the classical rock-paper-scissors game, and we consider both discrete lattice and continuous space, incorporating species mobility and intraspecific competitions. Our results reveal that, for all cases considered, a basin of coexistence always emerges and persists in a substantial part of the parameter space, indicating that coexistence is a robust phenomenon. Factors such as intraspecific competition can, in fact, promote coexistence by facilitating the emergence of the coexistence basin. In addition, we find that the extinction basins can exhibit quite complex structures in terms of the convergence time toward the final state for different initial conditions. We have also developed models based on partial differential equations, which yield basin structures that are in good agreement with those from microscopic stochastic simulations. To understand the origin and emergence of the observed complicated basin structures is challenging at the present due to the extremely high dimensional nature of the underlying dynamical system.

Spatial rock-paper-scissors models with inhomogeneous reaction rates

We study several variants of the stochastic four-state rock-paper-scissors game or, equivalently, cyclic three-species predator-prey models with conserved total particle density, by means of Monte Carlo simulations on one- and two-dimensional lattices. Specifically, we investigate the influence of spatial variability of the reaction rates and site occupancy restrictions on the transient oscillations of the species densities and on spatial correlation functions in the quasistationary coexistence state. For small systems, we also numerically determine the dependence of typical extinction times on the number of lattice sites. In stark contrast with two-species stochastic Lotka-Volterra systems, we find that for our three-species models with cyclic competition quenched disorder in the reaction rates has very little effect on the dynamics and the long-time properties of the coexistence state. Similarly, we observe that site restriction only has a minor influence on the system's dynamical properties. Our results therefore demonstrate that the features of the spatial rock-paper-scissors system are remarkably robust with respect to model variations, and stochastic fluctuations as well as spatial correlations play a comparatively minor role.

How community size affects survival chances in cyclic competition games that microorganisms play

Cyclic competition is a mechanism underlying biodiversity in nature and the competition between large numbers of interacting individuals under multifaceted environmental conditions. It is commonly modeled with the popular children's rock-paper-scissors game. Here we probe cyclic competition systematically in a community of three strains of bacteria Escherichia coli. Recent experiments and simulations indicated the resistant strain of E. coli to win the competition. Other data, however, predicted the sensitive strain to be the final winner. We find a generic feature of cyclic competition that solves this puzzle: community size plays a decisive role in selecting the surviving competitor. Size-dependent effects arise from an easily detectable "period of quasiextinction" and may be tested in experiments. We briefly indicate how.

Stochastic slowdown in evolutionary processes

We examine birth-death processes with state dependent transition probabilities and at least one absorbing boundary. In evolution, this describes selection acting on two different types in a finite population where reproductive events occur successively. If the two types have equal fitness the system performs a random walk. If one type has a fitness advantage it is favored by selection, which introduces a bias (asymmetry) in the transition probabilities. How long does it take until advantageous mutants have invaded and taken over? Surprisingly, we find that the average time of such a process can increase, even if the mutant type always has a fitness advantage. We discuss this finding for the Moran process and develop a simplified model which allows a more intuitive understanding. We show that this effect can occur for weak but nonvanishing bias (selection) in the state dependent transition rates and infer the scaling with system size. We also address the Wright-Fisher model commonly used in population genetics, which shows that this stochastic slowdown is not restricted to birth-death processes.

Entropy production of cyclic population dynamics

Entropy serves as a central observable in equilibrium thermodynamics. However, many biological and ecological systems operate far from thermal equilibrium. Here we show that entropy production can characterize the behavior of such nonequilibrium systems. To this end we calculate the entropy production for a population model that displays nonequilibrium behavior resulting from cyclic competition. At a critical point the dynamics exhibits a transition from large, limit-cycle-like oscillations to small, erratic oscillations. We show that the entropy production peaks very close to the critical point and tends to zero upon deviating from it. We further provide analytical methods for computing the entropy production which agree excellently with numerical simulations.

Effect of epidemic spreading on species coexistence in spatial rock-paper-scissors games

A fundamental question in nonlinear science and evolutionary biology is how epidemic spreading may affect coexistence. We address this question in the framework of mobile species under cyclic competitions by investigating the roles of both intra- and interspecies spreading. A surprising finding is that intraspecies infection can strongly promote coexistence while interspecies spreading cannot. These results are quantified and a theoretical paradigm based on nonlinear partial differential equations is derived to explain the numerical results.

Basins of attraction for species extinction and coexistence in spatial rock-paper-scissors games

We study the collective dynamics of mobile species under cyclic competition by breaking the symmetry in the initial populations and examining the basins of the two distinct asymptotic states: extinction and coexistence, the latter maintaining biodiversity. We find a rich dependence of dynamical properties on initial conditions. In particular, for high mobility, only extinction basins exist and they are spirally entangled, but a basin of coexistence emerges when the mobility parameter is decreased through a critical value, whose area increases monotonically as the parameter is further decreased. The structure of extinction basins for high mobility can be predicted by a mean-field theory. These results provide a more comprehensive picture for the fundamental issue of species coexistence than previously achieved.

Mobility and asymmetry effects in one-dimensional rock-paper-scissors games

As the behavior of a system composed of cyclically competing species is strongly influenced by the presence of fluctuations, it is of interest to study cyclic dominance in low dimensions where these effects are the most prominent. We here discuss rock-paper-scissors games on a one-dimensional lattice where the interaction rates and the mobility can be species dependent. Allowing only single site occupation, we realize mobility by exchanging individuals of different species. When the interaction and swapping rates are symmetric, a strongly enhanced swapping rate yields an increased mixing of the species, leading to a mean-field-like coexistence even in one-dimensional systems. This coexistence is transient when the rates are asymmetric, and eventually only one species will survive. Interestingly, in our spatial games the dominating species can differ from the species that would dominate in the corresponding nonspatial model. We identify different regimes in the parameter space and construct the corresponding dynamical phase diagram.