Complementary Variety: When Can Cooperation in Uncertain Environments Outperform Competitive Selection?

Figure 7

Empirical application of the proportionality of complementary variety of (7): . For the cases of (a) Japanese exports and (b) migrating birds in North America. The deltas are calculated for the empirical case of natural selection versus the case that the strategic cooperation holds the initial empirical population distribution constant over all periods (S_T:emp); and for the case that compares the population distribution that turns out to be optimal with the case in which this same optimized distribution would be the starting distribution of competitive selection over the entire period (S_T:opt). Optimal population shares were calculated with constrained nonlinear optimization algorithms in R (NLoptr).

(a)

(b)