Asymmetric interactions in the Hawk–Dove game enhance evolutionary complexity and resource utilization efficiency

The Hawk–Dove game is one of the most important theoretical models in evolutionary game theory. To reveal the coupling effects of symmetric and asymmetric interactions on the Hawk–Dove game, we investigate the evolutionary dynamics of a newly constructed Hawk–Dove game composed of strong and weak subpopulations, in which parameter p denotes the proportion of the strong subpopulation. We use the parameter k to measure the asymmetry degree between strong and weak individuals. Through system stability analysis, we found that the asymmetric interactions between individuals can lead to an increase not only in the evolutionary complexity of the system (i.e. the existence and structure of the equilibria and their stability) but also in the resource utilization efficiency under suitable parameter combinations (measured by the mean payoff of the total population). Overall, higher asymmetry tends to raise efficiency within intermediate values of the strong subpopulation proportion p , yet this promoting effect is non-monotonic with respect to k and vanishes when p is extremely low or excessively large. Spatial lattice simulation results are consistent with the theoretical analysis. Our results may provide a new perspective for understanding the coupling effect of symmetric and asymmetric interactions in real systems.