Survival of the Unfittest? - The Seceder Model and Its Fitness Landscape

The seceder model is an extremely simple individual based model which shows how the local tendency to be different gives rise to the formation of hierarchically structured groups, called the seceder effect. The model consists of a population of simple entities which reproduce and die. In a single reproduction event three individuals are chosen randomly and the individual which possesses the largest distance to their mean is reproduced by creating a mutated copy (offspring). The offspring replaces a randomly chosen individual of the population. In this contribution we investigate the effective fitness landscape of the seceder model. Fitness is measured as reproductive success. The investigation of the fitness landscape revealed an on the first view counterintuitive phenomena: The individuals of the basic seceder model are always located in the worst regions of the fitness landscape where the replication rate is relatively low.