  The effects of networking on the extent of cooperation emerging in a
competitive setting are studied. The evolutionary snowdrift game, which
represents a realistic alternative to the well-known Prisoner's Dilemma, is
studied in the Watts-Strogatz network that spans the regular, small-world, and
random networks through random re-wiring. Over a wide range of payoffs, a
re-wired network is found to suppress cooperation when compared with a
well-mixed or fully connected system. Two extinction payoffs, that characterize
the emergence of a homogeneous steady state, are identified. It is found that,
unlike in the Prisoner's Dilemma, the standard deviation of the degree
distribution is the dominant network property that governs the extinction
payoffs.
