The prisoner's dilemma (PD), in which players can either cooperate or defect, is considered a paradigm for studying the evolution of cooperation in spatially structured populations. There the compact cooperator cluster is identified as a characteristic pattern and the probability of forming such pattern in turn depends on the features of the networks. In this paper, we investigate the influence of expansion of neighborhood on pattern formation by taking a weak PD game with one free parameter T, the temptation to defect. Two different expansion methods of neighborhood are considered. One is based on a square lattice and expanses along four directions generating networks with degree increasing with K = 4m. The other is based on a lattice with Moore neighborhood and expanses along eight directions, generating networks with degree of K = 8m. Individuals are placed on the nodes of the networks, interact with their neighbors and learn from the better one. We find that cooperator can survive for a broad degree 4 <= K <= 70 by taking a loose type of cooperator clusters. The former simple corresponding relationship between macroscopic patterns and the microscopic PD interactions is broken. Under a condition that is unfavorable for cooperators such as large T and K, systems prefer to evolve to a loose type of cooperator clusters to support cooperation. However, compared to the well-known compact pattern, it is a suboptimal strategy because it cannot help cooperators dominating the population and always corresponding to a low cooperation level. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.
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