Received: 31. March 2010. Accepted: 28. June 2011.

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an agent based model of the evolution of cooperation in a complex environment. Anthropoid agents reproduce sexually, and live in a world where food is irregularly distributed in space and seasonally produced. They can share food, form hunting and migrating groups, and are able to build alliances to dispute territory. The agents memorize their interactions with others and their actions are mainly guided by emotions, modelled as propensities to react in specific ways to other agents' actions and environmental conditions. The results revealed that sexual reproduction is extremely relevant: in the proposed model cooperation was stronger between agents of opposite sex.

KEY WORDS

evolution of cooperation, computational model, anthropoids

CLASSIFICATION

JEL:

J4