Using evolutionary graph theory to study social networks:

“Lieberman developed the theory with Harvard mathematics professor Martin Nowak, who helped to lay its foundation through the observation that while most of evolutionary theory deals with populations that have either simple shapes or no structure at all, the world around us is full of evolving systems with all kinds of internal structure – whether it’s the networks of cells present in the human body or the social networks that occur in cyberspace.

“Our work was the first really systematic attempt to study Darwinian evolution on arbitrary networks,” says Lieberman. “The problem for theorists is that when you try to account for the network, the maths can get much harder. There’s a back-and-forth that goes on between networks and Darwinian evolution. On the one hand, the network structure affects the direction evolution will take; but on the other hand, over time evolution will remodel the network.”

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