From Newsgroup: talk.origins
On 1/2/2026 3:45 PM, William Hyde wrote:
Mating strategies among certain lizards resemble a human game:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-lizards-that-live- rock-paper-scissors-118219795/
William Hyde
https://phys.org/news/2010-02-evolutionary-game-rock-paper-scissors-species.html
My take is that the the system breaks down due to ice age reduction in territory and then reexpansion where founder effects can determine
exclusion of color morphs (some populations of only orange morphs are
found in the North). If the yellow invades the new territory first the
3 color strategy can restart as the other two color morphs migrate in,
but if the Blue morph invades first the yellow morph is less likely to
be able to migrate into that territory. The orange morph may be able to compete with the blue morph and you would get orange and blue, but no
yellow. Without the yellow morph to reduce the population of the Orange
morph it may eventually push the blue morph out of the new territory or
reduce the population size to where the blue morph is more likely to go extinct.
Ron Okimoto
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2