Spatial Evolution of Automata in the Prisoners' Dilemma

The paper applies the idea of evolution to a spatial model. We assume that the prisoners' dilemma is played only within a neighborhood and that evolutionary pressure works also only on a local level. Discriminatory behavior of players is introduced representing strategies as small automata, identical for a player but possibly in different states against different neighbors. Extensive simulations show that success among surviving strategies may differ and that in contrast to undiscriminative behavior cooperation persists even in a stochastic environment. Keywords: Evolutionary Game Theory, Networks, Prisoners' Dilemma, Overlapping Generations. JEL-Code: C63, C73, D62, D83, R12, R13.