A strategy that, once common in a population, cannot be invaded by any rare alternative.
John Maynard Smith used game theory: a strategy is evolutionarily stable if a population adopting it cannot be invaded by a mutant strategy. In the hawk-dove game the ESS is a mixed frequency depending on the value of resources and cost of fighting.
Payoffs are in fitness.
A strategy that, once common in a population, cannot be invaded by any rare alternative.
Evolutionary Stable Strategy is one of the 53 topics in Evolution. It is rated Advanced, so it suits learners who want specialist depth. Related topics in this area include Fitness, Allopatric Speciation, Founder Effect and Bottleneck.
Side-blotched lizards show rock-paper-scissors mating strategies.
Work through the Beginner topics in Evolution first, such as Evolution, Natural Selection, Charles Darwin, then return to Evolutionary Stable Strategy. Advanced topics assume the Intermediate vocabulary.
The closest topics to Evolutionary Stable Strategy are Fitness, Allopatric Speciation, Founder Effect and Bottleneck, Evolutionary Trade-offs. Comparing them side by side is a good way to see how the ideas connect.
Read the summary and the in-depth section, then use the quick check on the interactive lesson for Evolutionary Stable Strategy. To practise the whole of Evolution, use the Evolution quiz.
Evolutionary Stable Strategy: A strategy that, once common in a population, cannot be invaded by any rare alternative. Fitness: An organism's relative contribution of offspring to the next generation. Read both side by side and note what each one explains.
First, read the summary and write the definition in your own words. Second, read the in-depth section and note any example. Third, compare it with Fitness and explain the difference aloud. Finally, take the Evolution quiz and come back to this page for any question you miss.
An organism's relative contribution of offspring to the next generation.
🦎 EvolutionSpeciation after a geographic barrier separates populations, as with Darwin's finches on separate islands.
🦎 EvolutionLoss of genetic diversity after a few individuals found a new population or numbers crash.
🦎 EvolutionImproving one trait often costs another, constraining which adaptations can evolve.
🦎 Evolution