Re: The Evolutionarily Stable Strategy A.K.A ESS

rAgAv wrote:
Hello,

I've just got a small introduction to ESS (through "The selfish
Gene";well, I'm a beginner) and I had the following questions:-

That's how got started, and now I'm a professional...

Are the individuals in a species conscious of the ESS trends and their
adaption to them?

No. One of the beauties of ESSs is that they will be found by blind
selection (well, assuming there is an evolutionary path to it).

Remember that it is populations that are evolving, not individuals
changing their behaviour. So, the individuals who have behaviours that
lead to a higher fitness will tend to have more offspring, and hence the
behaviour will become more common.

Individuals can have fixed behaviours, but if there is variation between
individuals, this will lead to evolution towards the ESS.

If they unconsciously adapt an ESS, then what ( or which parts of
their brains) decides that the individual should follow the trends?

They don't the population will just evolve towards an ESS.

One of the beauties of the theory is that it was originally developed in
economics, where you run into the problem that the actors are able to
think, so they can change their strategies to something that isn't a
Nash Equilibrium, but may be preferable for them (for whatever reason).
Hence, the models might not work. But in evolutionary biology, the
actors are unable to reflect on their actions, so the better ones just
do better.


What is the nature of the threshould information that an individual
requires to change from one strategy to the ESS? For instance, would
the individual require direct bruises caused due to its lack of ESS to
adapt to ESS? If yes, then how would a survival machine find the ESS?
How does it find the ESS? Through trial-and-error or through memory-
and-contemplation?

Trial and error, but at the population level, and over a longer (i.e.
evolutionary) time-scale.

Bob

--
Bob O'Hara

Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics
P.O. Box 68 (Gustaf Hällströmin katu 2b)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland

Telephone: +358-9-191 51479
Mobile: +358 50 599 0540
Fax: +358-9-191 51400
WWW: http://www.RNI.Helsinki.FI/~boh/
Journal of Negative Results - EEB: http://www.jnr-eeb.org


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