Role of update dynamics in the collective cooperation on the spatial snowdrift games: Beyond unconditional imitation and replicator dynamics

In this paper, we investigate the role of update or imitation rules in the spatial snowdrift game on regular lattices. Three different update rules, including unconditional imitation (UI), replicator dynamics (RD) and the Moran process, are utilized to update the strategies of focal players during the game process in the spatial snowdrift on the lattice. We observe that the aggregate cooperation level between players is largely elevated by using the Moran process in the spatial snowdrift game, when compared to the UI or replicator dynamics. Meanwhile, we carefully explore the dynamical evolution of frequency of cooperators and the cluster formation pattern for these three update rules. Moreover, it is also shown that the evolutionary behavior under the Moran update is independent of and insensitive to the randomly initial configurations of cooperators and defectors. The current results clearly indicate that the introduction of moderate randomness in the strategy update will highly promote the maintenance and persistence of cooperation among selfish individuals, which will be greatly instrumental to deeply understand the evolution of cooperation within many natural, biological and social systems.

► We investigate the role of update rules in the spatial snowdrift game on regular lattices.
► Compared with UI and replicator rules, the cooperation can be further promoted by the Moran rule.
► fc and the cluster formation pattern for these three update rules are carefully explored.
► The frequency of cooperators is insensitive to the random initial set of players.