Game Theory in Parental Care
In the game theory section of the class, we briefly mentioned hawk and dove strategies that could be placed into a playoff matrix to analyze the best strategies of the players. In the typical hawk dove game, there was some value for the resource the two players were competing for. If one player played dove and other hawk, the hawk would get the majority of the resource. If they both played hawk, they would share this resource and have a negative factor for having to compete for it. If both played dove, they would share equally. This is one example of how game theory can be used to model animal behavior.
Another interesting way animal behavior can be modeled in a game and be analyzed by game theory is in parental care of offspring. After two individuals have an offspring, they can both choose to either stay to care for the child or desert the child. In deserting the child, the animal can find others to mate with and potential increase its reproductive success. However, if both desert the child, the child may not survive, resulting in a waste of energy and resources in producing this child. There are two main factors that go into predicting the parental care strategies of the parents: the dependence of the child on parental care and the probability of finding and mating with other individuals. These factors vary between species and even between sexes of the mating pair. If these factors are known, a payoff matrix can be set up and could be used to analyze the different parental care strategies (eg. bi-parental, female uni-parental) found in nature and have implications in mating strategies (eg. monogamy, polygamy). It’s interesting to see how networks can be used in various contexts, such as evolutionary biology.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534704003106