A presentation from the STEM Annual Conference 2014.
Aimed at students of biological or behavioural science this paper proposes a simple classroom exercises that can be used to involve students as players in an interactive demonstration of Maynard Smith’s ‘Hawk-Dove Game’. Active involvement in data production in addition to being a fun social exercise gives students a vested interest in the outcome of data analysis and so increases engagement.
Students are allocated a strategy (‘Hawk’ or ‘Dove’) and asked to move around the classroom interacting with 10 different players. For each interaction they receive a ‘reproduction points’ (positive for the winner zero for a losing Dove negative points for a losing Hawk).
Beginning with a large number of ‘Doves’ and very few ‘Hawks’ those playing Hawk quickly amass large numbers of reproduction points. This can then be used in an evolutionary manner – the ‘Hawks’ have large numbers of offspring the ‘Doves’ have very few and so a second generation round can start with a small number of ‘Doves’ and many ‘Hawks’. During this round most ‘Hawks’ end up with a negative number of fitness points while ‘Doves’ do not gain huge scores they do remain viable.
These results can be used to demonstrate frequency dependent selection – in the parameters of this model neither Hawk nor Dove is an evolutionary stable strategy but at a certain mix both will have equal fitness. A simple example to stimulate further discussion is the 1:1 sex ratio found in most animal species.
