# game: apropos of Parrondo's game, how a flexible parasite can outsmart its hosts for evolutionary dominance.

<< Antagonistic coevolution between hosts and parasites substantially impacts community structure, with parasites displaying fluctuating selection or arms race dynamics during coevolution. The traditional matching alleles (MA) and gene-for-gene (GFG) models have been used to describe the dynamics and interaction of host-parasite coevolution, with these models assuming that parasites adopt a single strategy when competing with other parasites. >>

AA << present a nonlinear dynamic population model that challenges this assumption, showing how a parasite that is disadvantaged under either the MA or the GFG model can win the competition by switching between the two losing strategies based on an external environmental cue, internal processes, or stochastic decision-making. >>

<< This counterintuitive outcome is analogous to Parrondo's paradox, a game-theoretic concept that shows how alternating between two losing strategies can result in a winning outcome. >>

Tao Wen, Eugene V. Koonin, Kang Hao Cheong. How flexible parasites can outsmart their hosts for evolutionary dominance. Phys. Rev. Research 6, 023104. Apr 30, 2024.

https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.023104 

Also: game, Parrondo, evolution, in https://www.inkgmr.net/kwrds.html 

Keywords: game, Parrondo, evolution

FonT: from my point of view, if well modulated, the two paired strategies "Stochastic Tit-For-Tat" and "Parrondo" are deadly, regardless of the aims of the objectives (cooperative purposes, parasitism, etc)