(Sexual Swimmers)

9 Conclusion

This project demonstrates how a simulation can generate emergent behavior on multiple scales in a simple virtual ecosystem, in which the small details of emergent locomotive behavior in individual organisms can affect, and be affected by, large-scale global dynamics. By combining recent evolutionary computation techniques for creating articulated virtual creatures with spatial, open-ended reproduction models, this work suggests that articulated movement in an artificial organism can come to have "meaning" in the context of the world in which it was born.

This work also demonstrates a rudimentary example of sexual selection, and how this can influence the distribution of phenotypes in a spatial model.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Rocket Scientist Bryan Galdrikian for his help in many aspects of this work. Thanks to Bill Davis and the rest of the crew at Rocket Science Games, Inc. for use of facilities, and for supporting my need to continue making wiggly things. Thanks to Mark Weissman for help in videotape production. And special thanks to Nuala Creed.

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