Subject: Game theories

From: [email-masked] (Dennis)
Date: 14 Jun 1995 17:05:53 -0700

Anyone up for discussing game theory??
 
Consider a place with lots of similar sized islands and an organism which
can only inhabit these islands.  Some of the islands are usable, and others
totally unusable.  Any number (up to 10) of individuals can inhabit any
particular island, but if any island has more than 2 individuals on it,
they usually all die.  Your chance of dying increases as the number of
individuals on your island goes up.  Now imagine that there are more
individuals of this organism than there are "good" islands, i.e., the
habitate is over saturated, so some islands will always have more than
one individual (about 30% of islands will have two or more individuals).
An individual can only arrive on an island from oviposition by a female.
Females can lay many eggs, but the total number of females and their eggs
is is not so high such that each island would be swapped, nor so low such
that some islands would go uninhabited.
 
Suggest a strategy females, or individuals might "adopt" under these
conditions to optimise fitness.
 
Cheers Dennis