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Seasnake

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EricL:
Seasnake 1.2 shoots it's entire genome as a virus, which turns other species into cells of the greater multibot.  Here a veggy has been co-opted and incorporated as a cell into the larger organism, providing veggy power to the multibot as well as acting as a integrated cell.

Peksa:

--- Quote from: EricL ---Seasnake 1.2 shoots it's entire genome as a virus, which turns other species into cells of the greater multibot.  Here a veggy has been co-opted and incorporated as a cell into the larger organism, providing veggy power to the multibot as well as acting as a integrated cell.
--- End quote ---

Nice. It screws up graphs and leagues though. It could be possible to actual seasnake species to die out, but have the DNA survive and continue to evolve

Numsgil:
Do two separate snake macro organisms ever combine in to a single snake?

EricL:

--- Quote from: Peksa ---Nice. It screws up graphs and leagues though. It could be possible to actual seasnake species to die out, but have the DNA survive and continue to evolve
--- End quote ---
Absolutely.  The dynamic is really interesting.  In IM, Seasnake is marked not to mutate and it uses .dnalen for conspec recognition.  But when it co-opts other species as cells, those can mutate.  A mutation changes changes the dna length and they start fighting against the original snakes with the full power of their (slightly modified) genome!  Once passive veggies become cells become compitiors and starve out the origninal strain.   In a prior version, the snakes were almost wiped out by their own renegade genome running in the shell of other species!  Now, version 1.2 kills itself if the DNA length changes to avoid this, but its still possible a mutation will disable the self destuct and once this happens, that mutate strain could spread and wipe out the original species as before.

There's a few lessons here I think:  

Evolution finds a way. It's often better to mutate so you can adapt then not to.

Arm's races are critical to preserving and enhancing complexity.  Competing against yourself (I.e. a genome very close to you but with slightly different conspec code) is the ultimate in selection pressure.  The compeitiors are so closely matched that any reduction in functionality due to deleterious mutations is heavily selected against.  Only benifical mutations survive.  

If you can't beat em, starve em.   There's lots of ways to compete.  Being the best killer is just one.  Taking away anothers food source is just as effective.

EricL:

--- Quote from: Numsgil ---Do two separate snake macro organisms ever combine in to a single snake?
--- End quote ---
Absolutely.  Each cell is bascially a stem cell.  It can do things on it's own like move and hunt and feed, but it also looks for conspeces.  Each has a random number.  Smaller numberred cells will hook onto the back of ones with larger numbers.  So when the head of one snake sees the tail of another and that number is higher, two snakes will merge.  Once a cell is part of a snake, it takes on a role depending upon it's position in the snake: head, tail, middle.  The role dictates what it can and can't when part of a snake.  Only the head navigates and initiates movement for example, the middle and tail only follow the leader, only tails reproduce, etc.  Children produced by a tail inherit a number one less than the parent and automatically attach to the end of the snake (unless soemthign disrupts this during those first few critical cycles after birth) becoming a new tail and growing the snake...  So, snakes grow both via the eqivalent of cell division (by the tail cell) and dynamic assembly of lone (potentially hijacked) cells or smaller snakes into larger ones.

This IMHO is the only robust way to build multibots I.e. as autonomous single celled entites which can self assemble and assume a role in a larger organism dynamically.  I think it sheds light on how multi cellularity emerged in nature I.e. via loose cooperation between single celled organisms which discoverred over time the advantages of specialization.

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