How multilevel competition drives cooperation in stigmergic systems

Between-group competition in the Stigmer Game with human participants yields the highest collaboration, while within-group competition favors defection, with reward distribution modulating how much cooperation is restored.

• Why it matters: Cooperation via stigmergy depends on trustworthy shared information, but misleading can pay; the study tests how competition at different levels reshapes this conflict.
• What they did: Humans played the Stigmer Game under seven payment rules, were classified as collaborators, neutrals, or defectors, and were analyzed with quantitative models plus a genetic algorithm for stationary strategy compositions.
• The result: Within-group and rank-based competitive pressures best explained behavioral composition differences across payment rules, and distinct stationary strategy mixes emerged that were largely independent of initial conditions and robust to perturbations.

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