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