Choose your lizard population size (dynamics last longer with increasing size of population). See the population dynamics of the "common side-blotched lizard," whose males come in three varieties named after the color of their throats. Each has a different strategy for mating with females. Orange throats dominate large territories with lots of females. They use brute force to steal blue throats' females. So male orange throats beat blue throats. Yellow throats beat orange throats. Yellow throats sneak in oranges' territores to mate with their females. Blue throats beat yellow throats: Blue throats are monogamous. Focusing on one female, they can prevent yellows from sneaking in to steal their mates. There's no top variant, as in rock-paper-scissors, but in this model each can be invaded only if next to three or more of it's "predators." But each Dynamic balance and co-existence results, with spirally patterns and oscillations. These lizards make up a kind of ecological rock-paper-scissors game. Try on turbowarp.
Based on Sinervo's field studies of three variants of the common side-blotched lizard. The three variants co-exist competively in a rock-paper-scissors ecology. The size of population makes a big difference. Dynamic equilibrium becomes more likely with larger population size. On the coding end, I'm excited to have made this setup for different population sizes, scaling up numbers while scaling down images and so on. Reference: Sinervo, B. & Lively, C. M. The rock–paper–scissors game and the evolution of alternative male strategies. Nature 380, 240–243 (1996).
