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November 26, 2005
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:icondovsherman:
This is a variation on my earlier Wa-Tor Ecosystem simulation ([link]). I started thinking about how hard it might be to find the absolutely perfect balance between all the parameters and wondered how I could find the right numbers to use. So I decided to try survival of the fittest.

Two ecosystems with slightly different parameters run side-by-side. When one of them experiences extinction of one of the two species, that ecosystem is forgotten. The surviving ecosystem is copied into two new ecosystems and the parameters in each are slightly altered. Then the simulation is run again.

Initially, each ecosystem starts with very random settings but, in theory, the parameters should eventually converge toward longer survivability over time.
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:iconawesty:
~awesty Apr 5, 2008
This is really interesting.
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:iconspacewhale:
!SpaceWhale Dec 17, 2007  Hobbyist Photographer
With the sharks set at breed 5 starve 4 initial 4 and the fish set a breed 2 or 3 and initial 40, i've had one ecosystem going for over 15 minutes.
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:iconnydhalo:
~Nydhalo Nov 7, 2007
Very nice work !
I really appreciate simulations like that ... it teachs us a lot about how nature works.
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:iconmadman1455:
~madman1455 Jun 15, 2007  Hobbyist Artisan Crafter
Whew... i let it go for 2000 generations... its now donw to the point where fish breed every 1 second and sharks take 2 minutes. also the starting population of the sharks is 2 while the fish are at 100...
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:iconhalfwing:
~Halfwing Apr 16, 2007
Interesting, I remember fiddling with the same kinda program back in high school... although I'm doing a biology degree this year I'm ashamed to say that I still suck majorly at ecology. >>;
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:icondovsherman:
~DovSherman Mar 8, 2010
Ecology and evolution were always easier for me than other aspects of biology because they are more mathy and algorithmy.
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:iconhypercat-z:
~Hypercat-Z Mar 30, 2007
Really interesting! It's quite the basic of the Darwin's law.
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:iconsharkoftheday:
~sharkoftheday Nov 26, 2005  Hobbyist Writer
Somewhere along the line (an ecogeneration in the 40's) the computer decided that fish with a higher breed number than 1 are ideal and now it is going haywire. The starve time of the sharks keeps rising (as well as the initial population) while the initial population of fish keeps decreasing. I'm not sure if you had that problem or not, but, well, its just going insane (before it lasted over a hundred seconds, now it can't even make it to ten). Too much random chance, at this point its how long before the sharks eat all the fish or which sharks die off last rather than which is a more lasting ecosystem.
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:icondovsherman:
~DovSherman Nov 27, 2005
That's just the way evolution works sometimes and it's especially likely with such a small population. In this case, we're evolving use a species with a population of 2 if we consider the ecosystem to be the evolving species. One solution would be to have a larger population sample such as having 6 or 10 ecosims running simultaneously. I'll have to tinker with that and see if it's possible. In the meantime, I've added a control panel that will allow you to play intelligent designer and choose the parameters yourself.
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:iconwinnietehpoohie:
=winnietehpoohie Nov 26, 2005  Hobbyist Digital Artist
Very nice! ^^
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