Exploring the Importance of Stochasticity to Hybrid Equilibria in a Discrete Signaling Game

Communication via evolved signals is ubiquitous (both within and between species) in the natural world. However, how honest we should expect signals to be remains an open question. Hybrid equilibria are a form of equilibria predicted by discrete signaling games in which signalers are sometimes dishonest and signals do not completely reliably convey information on signaler quality. While these equilibria have been theoretically demonstrated in several signaling games, their dynamics in a stochastic simulation of evolutionary trajectories (that include representation of the inherent noise expected in evolution in the natural world) have not previously been studied. In this paper, we present an agent-based simulation of a discrete signaling game which exhibits hybrid equilibria. We find that while hybrid equilibria are evolutionarily attractive where they exist, populations exhibit vairable and often drastic oscillating behavior around the predicted equilibrium values. We discuss how these..., Included in this repository:

Data from agent-based simulations.
Code for simulations presented in the paper.
, , # Raw data for Exploring the Importance of Stochasticity to Hybrid Equilibria in a Discrete Signaling Game

[Access this dataset on Dryad](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7d7wm384b)

This dataset contains results of simulations of a discrete signaling game. Results for two main experiments are given.

One experiment allowed agents to play the signalling game starting at a nonsignaling or honest signaling state in order to determine which equilibria they reach after 1,000,000 generations. The other experiment focuses on trajectories of these simulations, studying how differential mutation rates for senders and receivers affects oscillations in strategies through time.

## Description of the data and file structure (in Data.zip)

### Equilibria\_Honest Start and Equilibria\_No Signaling Start folders:

These folder contain raw data for simulations used to make figure 3 in the manuscript and supplementary figures 1-2.

Simulations initialized at an honest signaling state (Equilibria_Honest S...