WHAT IS IT?
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This NetLogo simulation is aimed at stimulating some thought about evolutionary processes.

The basic idea is this: there are a bunch of agents, each with a "genome" (a string of bits). At each time step, each agent looks at its (nearby) neighbors and selects one to mate with. The selection algorithm is to choose the neighbor who is most different (hamming distance of genomes) from you. Reproduction is replacement of self by a single offspring, whose genome is the result of a crossover with the mate (a crossover point is selected; the new genome results from one parent up to the crossover point, and the other parent from there on -- which parent selected at random). The crossover point is selected from a normal distribution with mean genome-size / 2, and standard deviation genome-size / 6. There is also the possibility of mutation of a "gene" (a bit in the genome).

HOW TO USE IT
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Each pass through the GO function represents one time step. The histogram shows the number of agents having a given range of genomes. The genomes are represented as the binary number corresponding to the genome bit string.

The applet requires Java 1.4.1 or higher to run. It will not run on Windows 95 or Mac OS 8 or 9. Mac users must have OS X 10.2.6 or higher and use a browser that supports Java 1.4 applets (Safari works, IE does not). On other operating systems, you may obtain the latest Java plugin from Sun's Java site.

created with NetLogo

view/download model file: MostDifferent.nlogo