  Recent works suggest that pooling and sharing may constitute a fundamental
mechanism for the evolution of cooperation in well-mixed fluctuating
environments. The rationale is that, by reducing the amplitude of fluctuations,
pooling and sharing increases the steady-state growth rate at which the
individuals self-reproduce. However, in reality interactions are seldom
realized in a well-mixed structure, and the underlying topology is in general
described by a complex network. Motivated by this observation, we investigate
the role of the network structure on the cooperative dynamics in fluctuating
environments, by developing a model for networked pooling and sharing of
resources undergoing environmental fluctuations, represented through geometric
Brownian motion. The study reveals that, while in general cooperation increases
the individual steady state growth rates (i.e. is evolutionary advantageous),
the interplay with the network structure may yield large discrepancies in the
observed individual resource endowments. We comment possible biological and
social implications and discuss relations to econophysics.
