Abstract

A and B in signaling games (Lewis 1969). Members of the population, such as our prehistoric pair, are occasionally faced with the following ‘game’. Let one of the players be the receiver and the other the sender. The receiver needs to know whether B is true or not, but only possesses information about whether A is true or not. In some environmental contexts, A is sufficient for B, in others it is not. The sender knows nothing about A or B, but does know that A is sufficient for B in some environments. This is a higher-order signaling game in which both players can benefit from sharing the information that they possess. How does a communication strategy evolve, and is it evolutionarily stable?