RT Journal Article
T1 Emergent diversity in an open-ended evolving virtual community
A1 Fernández-Rodríguez, Jose David
A1 Lobo Fernández, Daniel
A1 Martín Reyes, Gema María
A1 Doursat, René
A1 Vico-Vela, Francisco José
K1 Biología computacional
AB Understanding the dynamics of biodiversity hasbecome an important line of research in theoretical ecology and,in particular, conservation biology. However, studying the evolutionof ecological communities under traditional modeling approachesbased on differential calculus requires speciesʼ characteristics to bepredefined, which limits the generality of the results. An alternativebut less standardized methodology relies on intensive computersimulation of evolving communities made of simple, explicitlydescribed individuals. We study here the formation, evolution, anddiversity dynamics of a community of virtual plants with a novelindividual-centered model involving three different scales: thegenetic, the developmental, and the physiological scales. It constitutesan original attempt at combining development, evolution, andpopulation dynamics (based on multi-agent interactions) into onecomprehensive, yet simple model. In this world, we observe that oursimulated plants evolve increasingly elaborate canopies, which arecapable of intercepting ever greater amounts of light. Generatedmorphologies vary from the simplest one-branch structure ofpromoter plants to a complex arborization of several hundredthousand branches in highly evolved variants. On the populationscale, the heterogeneous spatial structuration of the plant communityat each generation depends solely on the evolution of its componentplants. Using this virtual data, the morphologies and the dynamicsof diversity production were analyzed by various statistical methods,based on genotypic and phenotypic distance metrics. The resultsdemonstrate that diversity can spontaneously emerge in a communityof mutually interacting individuals under the influence of specificenvironmental conditions.
PB MIT Press
YR 2012
FD 2012
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10630/6707
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10630/6707
LA spa
NO Fernandez JD, Lobo D, Martin G, Doursat R & Vico FJ (2012) Emergent diversity in an open-ended evolving virtual community. Artificial Life, 18(2), pp. 199-222. (http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/artl)
NO This researchwas partially supported by a grant for the GENEX project (P09-TIC-5123) from the Consejería deInnovación y Ciencia de Andalucía. J.D.F. was supported by a FPU grant from the Spanish Ministeriode Educación. R.D. wishes to thank the Région Ile-de-France for supporting his research position atthe Complex Systems Institute, Paris Ile-de-France.
DS RIUMA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga
RD 20 ene 2026