Category: Ecology

Summary: Testing whether intermediate refuge turnover maximizes cooperation in hypergraph public-goods games near the cooperation threshold.

Protective refuges can shield cooperators, but static protection may become easy to exploit while rapid reshuffling may prevent cooperative clusters from forming. This experiment asks whether an intermediate turnover rate creates the best balance between protection and renewal in public-goods games played on higher-order interaction networks.

The model runs stochastic hypergraph public-goods dynamics with varying group sizes, synergy levels, and refuge turnover periods. It compares static, intermediate, and rapidly changing refuge assignments to see when cooperation is strongest.

The interest here is not just in dynamic refuges, but in how they interact with higher-order social structure. Hypergraphs allow cooperation to spread through group interactions rather than simple pairwise links, making turnover a genuinely collective effect.

Method: Stochastic hypergraph public-goods simulations with varying refuge turnover periods, synergy levels, and hyperedge sizes.

What is measured: Cooperator fraction, dependence on refuge turnover, support for intermediate-turnover advantage, and condition-level outcomes across hypergraph settings.