The emergence and maintenance of cooperation by natural selection is an enduring conundrum in evolutionary biology, which has been studied using a variety of game theoretical models inspired by different biological situations. ...

Life is based on replication and evolution. But replication cannot be taken for granted. We must ask what there was prior to replication and evolution. How does evolution begin? We have proposed prelife as a generative ...

We study the origin of evolution. Evolution is based on replication, mutation, and selection. But how does evolution begin? When do chemical kinetics turn into evolutionary dynamics? We propose “prelife” and “prevolution” ...

The standard model for direct reciprocity is the repeated Prisoner's Dilemma, where in each round players choose between cooperation and defection. Here we extend the standard framework to include costly punishment. Now ...