Hawks, Doves and Lifetime Reproductive Fitness

Evolutionary game theory is an adaptation of classical game theory used to analyse and explain observed natural phenomena where organisms choose between alternative behavioural strategies. Recent analyses and simulations of evolutionary games have shown that implementation choices such as population size and selection method can have unexpected effects on the course of evolution. In this paper, we propose a new evolutionary interpretation of such games that uses a more biologically faithful selection scheme, in which selection choices and population size emerge from the interactions of the players and their environment. Using the well-known Hawks and Doves game as an example, we show that the resulting models are also tractable, easily simulated, and flexible.