ABSTRACT
In this chapter we discuss four classical evolutionary games. The Hawk-Dove game is perhaps the best known game modelling biological behaviour and explains the relative rarity of the use of dangerous weaponry in some contests over valuable resources involving heavily armed animals, for example the highly ritualistic displays involved in contests between red deer stags during their rut. The war of attrition models such an extensive non-aggressive ritualistic contest. The Prisoner's Dilemma, widely used beyond evolutionary games, models the apparent paradox of cooperative behaviour in game theory. and the sex ratio game. Finally, the sex-ratio game explains why the proportion of females in many biological populations is, again apparently paradoxically, near a half.
