evolutionarily stable strategy

plural evolutionarily stable strategies · alternative evolutionary stable strategy

1. evolutionary theorycomputingA strategy that, when adopted by a population, is effective and not foreseeably likely to be replaced by another strategy.

   An evolutionarily stable strategy is a strategy that does well against copies of itself.

   1976, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

   2 more examples

   1986 John Maynard Smith: Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge University Press In this chapter, I introduce the concept of an "evolutionarily stable strategy", or ESS. A 'strategy' is a behavioural phenotype; i.e. it is a specification of what an individual will do in any situation in which it may find itself. An ESS is a strategy such that, if all the members of a population adopt it, then no mutant strategy could invade the population under the influence of natural selection. The concept is couched in terms of a "strategy" because it arose in the context of animal behaviour. The idea, however, can be applied equally well to any kind of phenotypic variation, and the word strategy could be replaced by the word phenotype; for example, a strategy could be the growth form of a plant, or the age at first reproduction, or the relative numbers of sons and daughters produced by a parent.

   To be an evolutionarily stable strategy, remember, a strategy must not be invadable, when it is common, by a rare mutant strategy.

   1976, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

   Synonyms: ESS