evolutionarily stable strategy
evolutionarily stable strategy noun: a strategy that, when adopted by a population, is effective and not foreseeably likely to be replaced by another strategy.
Noun
evolutionarily stable strategy (plural evolutionarily stable strategies)
- A strategy that, when adopted by a population, is effective and not foreseeably likely to be replaced by another strategy.
- In this chapter, I introduce the concept of an "evolutionarily stable strategy", or ESS. A 'strategy' is a behavioural phenotype; i.e. it is a specification of what an individual will do in any situation in which it may find itself. An ESS is a strategy such that, if all the members of a population...1986 John Maynard Smith: Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge University Press
- To be an evolutionarily stable strategy, remember, a strategy must not be invadable, when it is common, by a rare mutant strategy.1976, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
- Synonyms:
- ESS
Synonyms of evolutionarily stable strategy
Forms of evolutionarily stable strategy
| plural | evolutionarily stable strategies |
|---|---|
| alternative form | evolutionary stable strategy |
Origin of evolutionarily stable strategy
Coined by British biologist John Maynard Smith in 1972 in his paper Game Theory and The Evolution of Fighting.
Words formed from evolutionarily stable strategy
Questions about evolutionarily stable strategy
- What does evolutionarily stable strategy mean?
- Evolutionarily stable strategy means a strategy that, when adopted by a population, is effective and not foreseeably likely to be replaced by another strategy.
- What part of speech is evolutionarily stable strategy?
- Evolutionarily stable strategy is a noun.
- What is the plural of evolutionarily stable strategy?
- The plural of evolutionarily stable strategy is evolutionarily stable strategies.
Words near evolutionarily stable strategy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: evolutionarily stable strategy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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