Game Theory

Question 1

What is agonistic behavior?

Answer 1

Social behavior related to fighting or competition

Question 2

What are the types of agonistic behavior?

Answer 2

1) Sexual aggression (male-male competition)
2) Territoriality
3) Dominance

Question 3

What are the benefits of aggression?

Answer 3

If you win the fight, you get the benefits of the resources

Question 4

What are the costs of aggression?

Answer 4

1) Energetic costs
2) Opportunity cost - the time spent fighting is time you can’t spend doing other things.
3) Risk of injury - you need to heal from this.

Question 5

What is the prediction regarding the costs and benefits of aggression?

Answer 5

Individuals should be able to fight, as long as the potential benefit of winning exceeds the cost of continuing to fight.

Question 6

Costs and benefits of aggression depend on the ________. of the opponent. Because of this, we use ______________ ____________.

Answer 6

Behavior, Game theory

Question 7

What is game theory?

Answer 7

• Uses a series of models to understand the outcomes of interactions between different types of opponents
• Models the consequences of strategies that depend on others’ actions.

Question 8

What does a payoff matrix tell us?

Answer 8

Tells us the fitness of both strategies when each one is common

Question 9

What is an evolutionary stable strategy?

Answer 9

A strategy that cannot be beaten by another strategy when it’s common.
- When a strategy has the highest fitness when it’s common, that’s what makes it an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS).

Question 10

What can we use to figure out which strategy (or strategies) will be favored by selection?

Answer 10

Payoff matrixes