Evolutionary origin of asymptotically stable consensus

Abstract

Consensus is widely observed in nature as well as in society. Up to now, many works have focused on what kind of (and how) isolated single structures lead to consensus, while the dynamics of consensus in interdependent populations remains unclear, although interactive structures are everywhere. For such consensus in interdependent populations, we refer that the fraction of population adopting a specified strategy is the same across different interactive structures. A two-strategy game as a conflict is adopted to explore how natural selection affects the consensus in such interdependent populations. It is shown that when selection is absent, all the consensus states are stable, but none are evolutionarily stable. In other words, the final consensus state can go back and forth from one to another. When selection is present, there is only a small number of stable consensus state which are evolutionarily stable. Our study highlights the importance of evolution on stabilizing consensus in interdependent populations.