*** Welcome to piglix ***

Unbeatable strategy


In biology, the idea of an unbeatable strategy was proposed by W.D. Hamilton in his 1967 paper on sex ratios in Science. In this paper Hamilton discusses sex ratios as strategies in a game, and cites Verner as using this language in his 1965 paper which "claims to show that, given factors causing fluctuations of the population's primary sex ratio, a 1:1 sex-ratio production proves the best overall genotypic strategy".

The concept can be traced through R.A. Fisher (1930) to Darwin (1859); see Edwards (1998). Hamilton did not explicitly define the term "unbeatable strategy" or apply the concept beyond the evolution of sex-ratios, but the idea was very influential. George R. Price generalised the verbal argument, which was then formalised mathematically by John Maynard Smith, into the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS).


...
Wikipedia

...