A Zoo of Self-Replicators
Eleonora Bilotta, Pietro Pantano · IGI Global eBooks · 2010
Our basic metaphor: in this chapter, we present a taxonomy of self-replicators - as if they were animals in a zoo. In the zoo, we play the role of an external observer (a zoologist) whose role is to describe the animals (artificial organisms) and their behavior. Different species reproduce in different ways - some sexually, some asexually. We observe differences in their developmental dynamics and differences in the way they adapt to their environment. In each case, what we see are life-like self-replicators, each adapted to a specific habitat. In Chapters 7 and 8, we have seen how evolutionary techniques can create a broad variety of self-replicators. The complex ways in which these self-replicators grow, reproduce and become extinct bring to mind the behavior of biological systems. In Chapter 11, we examined their genetics. Here we examine their behavior at the individual and the species level, applying a range of observational and experimental methods and using the results as the basis for a taxonomy.