A speciation simulation that partly passes open-endedness tests

TL;DR

This study evaluates the open-endedness of the Tree of Life Simulation (ToLSim), finding it exhibits unbounded evolutionary activity but does not fully achieve open-ended evolution, with activity becoming null over time.

Contribution

The paper introduces a method to measure evolutionary activity in ToLSim and assesses its capacity for open-ended evolution based on this metric.

Findings

ToLSim shows unbounded total evolutionary activity

Normalized activity appears bounded and declines over time

Further research suggested with different biological components

Abstract

One of the main goals of artificial life research is to recreate in artificial systems the trends for ever more complex and novel entities, interactions and processes that we see in Earth's biosphere, that is, to create open-ended systems. In this paper, we test for Tokyo type 1 open-ended evolution (OEE) of the Tree of Life Simulation (ToLSim), an artificial life software created by Lana Sinapayen. To do so, we conducted an experiment to measure evolutionary activity statistics. These require us to define the notion of components. Here, we define components as the agent's genes. The results show that ToLSim is capable of exhibiting unbounded total cumulative evolutionary activity. However, total and median normalized cumulative evolutionary activity appear bounded and new evolutionary activity is persistently null, suggesting that ToLSim is not open-ended. Further studies on ToLSim could repeat this experiment with individuals or even species, rather than genes, to test whether the present results are valid.