Effects of average degree on cooperation in networked evolutionary game

We study effects of average degree on cooperation in the networked prisoner's dilemma game. Typical structures are considered, including random networks, small-world networks and scale-free networks. Simulation results show that the average degree plays a universal role in cooperation occurring on all these networks, that is the density of cooperators peaks at some specific values of the average degree. Moreover, we investigated the average payoff of players through numerical simulations together with theoretical predictions and found that simulation results agree with the predictions. Our work may be helpful in understanding network effects on the evolutionary games. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2006