Revisiting evolutionary game theory

Evolutionary game theory is a relatively young mathematical theory that aims to formalize in mathematical terms evolution models in biology. In recent years this paradigm has penetrated more and more into other areas such as the linguistics, economics and engineering. The current theory of evolutionary game makes an implicit assumption that the evolution is driven by selfishness of individuals who interact with each others. In mathematical terms this can be stated as “an individual equals a player in a game model”. This assumption turns out to be quite restrictive in modeling evolution in biology. It is now more and more accepted among biologist that the evolution is driven by the selfish interests of large groups of individuals; a group may correspond for example to a whole beehive or to an ants´ nest. In this paper we propose an alternative paradigm for modeling evolution where a player does not necessarily represent an interacting individual but a whole class of such individuals.