The Hairy-Downy game: a model of interspecific social dominance mimicry

The evolution of many forms of mimicry are well understood, but the evolution of mimicry in the absence of aposematic models or third party participants remains poorly understood. This paper presents a model of the evolution of interspecific social dominance mimicry (ISDM), that does not rely on third-party observers, in the context of the Hairy-Downy game. Members of a socially dominant species contest a resource by playing the hawk-dove game. Nonmimic members of a subordinate species surrender the resource whenever encountering a member of the dominant species, and split the resource whenever interacting among themselves. Mimicry allows members of the subordinate species to pose as members of the dominant species who play dove, splitting the resource when facing other dominant doves while continuing to surrender the resource to dominant hawks. We characterize the evolutionary dynamics and equilibrium behavior of this game, developing conditions under which evolution will select for mimicry, and under which the subordinate species will consist (almost or even literally) entirely of mimics.