Cascade of Complexity in Evolving Predator-Prey Dynamics

TL;DR

This paper presents a simulation of digital predator-prey organisms demonstrating how complexity grows in an open-ended manner driven by invariant genetic operators and controlled by a critical point, akin to turbulence cascades.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model showing how complexity cascades in evolving digital ecosystems, linking genetic invariance to non-equilibrium critical dynamics.

Findings

Complexity grows without bounds in the model.

Emergent dynamics are governed by a non-equilibrium critical point.

The mechanism resembles turbulence cascades in fluid dynamics.

Abstract

We simulate an individual-based model that represents both the phenotype and genome of digital organisms with predator-prey interactions. We show how open-ended growth of complexity arises from the invariance of genetic evolution operators with respect to changes in the complexity, and that the dynamics which emerges is controlled by a non-equilibrium critical point. The mechanism is analogous to the development of the cascade in fluid turbulence.