PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jorge Peña
AU  - Georg Nöldeke
TI  - Variability in group size and the evolution of collective action
AID  - 10.1101/021485
DP  - 2015 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 021485
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/06/25/021485.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/06/25/021485.full
AB  - Models of the evolution of collective action typically assume that interactions occur in groups of identical size. In contrast, social interactions between animals occur in groups of widely dispersed size. This article models collective action problems as two-strategy multiplayer games and studies the effect of variability in group size on the evolution of cooperative behavior under the replicator dynamics. The analysis identifies elementary conditions on the payoff structure of the game implying that the evolution of cooperative behavior is promoted or inhibited when the group size experienced by a focal player is more variable. Similar but more stringent conditions are applicable when the confounding effect of size-biased sampling, which causes the group-size distribution experienced by a focal player to differ from the statistical distribution of group sizes, is taken into account.