Darwinbots Forum
Code center => Suggestions => Specialization, Metabolism, Digestions and Env Grid => Topic started by: Numsgil on February 24, 2005, 03:07:52 AM
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I'm working on figuring a metabolic system for black smokers. If you don't know what that is, google it, there's all kinds of information.
I have thus far:
H2S + O2 + CO2 -> nrg + S + H20
S + H20 + O2 -> SO4 + nrg
As the two metabolic processes.
I don't know what happens to the SO4. Does it get split and turned into H2S and O2 by the intense heat of the black smoker?
Other than that, I think this could work really well. A black smoker would be a comparitvely long tub that emits H2S and alot of heat along the bottom of the screen (would only really make sense in pond mode). The heat and Hydrogen Sulfide would dissipate into the environment.
You could edit the smoker attributes either through the options panel or by clicking on it during the simulation.
Organisms that contain this sulfuric metabolism are poisonous to most bots that aren't adapted, but if a carbon cycle organism learns to eat black smoker life forms some how it could develop a niche.
So many possibilities.
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Erupting chemicals - H2S, FeS, H2, NH4, NO2, CH4
O2 and CO2 are still dissolved in seawater
CO2 + H2O + H2S + O2 -> CH2O + H2SO4
FeS+H2S ->FeS2+H2+free energy
H2SO4 is soluble in water.
H2SO4 <-> H3O + + HSO4 -
HSO4 - <-> H3O + + SO4 2-
SO4 is dissolved in water
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okej its fun whit chemistry, but why take it up here?
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okej its fun whit chemistry, but why take it up here?
Because this is what we intend to do with the e-grid.
We want to simulate real chemical cycles in the environment. Create niches where different robots can metabolize different things to create an ecosystem.
:D PY :D
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Other than that, I think this could work really well. A black smoker would be a comparitvely long tub that emits H2S and alot of heat along the bottom of the screen (would only really make sense in pond mode). The heat and Hydrogen Sulfide would dissipate into the environment.
From top down view, a black smoker could be a point source (or a group of point sources) which takes up one cell of the egrid each. From settings panels we can define how much stuff comes out of the smoker. If we want more stuff in a small area then we can just use several of them together.
Sulfer and heat will gradually spread out using the mechanisms that the e-grid already has in place.
Same really applies to pond mode.
The point is that very close to the smoker is a place where many robots will not want to be. Very hot and very poisonous.
:D PY :D
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I thought all this e-grid stuff will be randomly located by the program and change locations over time...
...^ you can add that as an option though :rolleyes: ;) cant you?
...^ change cant be too fast or robots will have no time to addapt , change cant be too slow or we get hunters that dont like to search for food and travel because the food is always nearby, and we get plants that dont invent unique patterns of plasing there babys
OK from what you guys have been talking about I figured out this :
1) Robots can mutate into who ever they want. The 4 things they can mutate into are are 1# waste feeder 2# Plant 3#Plant Eater 4#Hunter
2)The e-grid is the thing that determins what robots will mutate into
Did I get it right? If I did cool that will be the smartest thing that ever happend in DB
:ph43r: Bau :ph43r:
:o PY creaped me out just now he changed te color of the board on me , AAA!
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PY creaped me out just now he changed te color of the board on me , AAA!
But do you like it though? There will be a vote soon.
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I thought all this e-grid stuff will be randomly located by the program and change locations over time...
You are partly right.
The program actively spreads stuff about so that eventually all cells of the e-grid will be the same. This is a slow process.
The idea of smokers, waste runoffs or whatever is so that we will have point sources which will continuously add certain things to the grid in specific locations. For example the smokers will be surrounded by zones of higher heat and Sulfer than surrounding areas. Both will slowly spread out and a certain amount will need to be lost at various places (possibly sinks, possibly robot metabolic proceses like coral reefs removing calcium from the sea, possibly by loss of volatile substances to the atmosphere above the pond) to balance the input.
:D PY :D
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The program actively spreads stuff about so that eventually all cells of the e-grid will be the same. This is a slow process.
after that happens what kinds of robots are we left with?
As long as in the end all robots dont die , and we got plants and animals I am cool
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Just remember that all robots and plants will take something from the grid and put something else back.
For example a plant will grab up all the available CO2 around it and exude O2 so it will be in an area which is locally very high in O2 but low in CO2. The program will spread this around so that the plant doesn't suffocate in its own waste(O2) and has a steady supply of new CO2 to metabolize.
:D Py :D
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ic , now check out my fix to the huge numbers mutating problem
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:rolleyes: Duh not logged in sry , http://s9.invisionfree.com/DarwinBots_Foru...hp?showtopic=65 (http://s9.invisionfree.com/DarwinBots_Forum/index.php?showtopic=65)
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Erupting chemicals - H2S, FeS, H2, NH4, NO2, CH4
O2 and CO2 are still dissolved in seawater
CO2 + H2O + H2S + O2 -> CH2O + H2SO4
FeS+H2S ->FeS2+H2+free energy
H2SO4 is soluble in water.
H2SO4 <-> H3O + + HSO4 -
HSO4 - <-> H3O + + SO4 2-
SO4 is dissolved in water
How does that fit in with the equations I listed? I took them (unbalanced of course) from my bio text book.
I'm just trying to figure out all the possible metabolic types. :ph43r:
I think we should have the option to randomly kill of a smoker from time to time. From what I hear, this happens in the real environment. Then bots might evolve to go into nomad mode, and search out anotherone.
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I think we should have the option to randomly kill of a smoker from time to time. From what I hear, this happens in the real environment. Then bots might evolve to go into nomad mode, and search out anotherone.
Don't much like the idea of randomly turning a smoker off.
Seems to me that black smokers are a very stable environment. Whole comunities of creatures live around them. Most (if not all) of these would be incapale of surviving long enough to migrate to a new smoker if theirs should suddenly stop smoking as it were.
I don't know much about how this works in real life but I would have thought that a smoker would have to be extremely long lived and stable in order for creatures to adapt to living on it through evolution.
Do you have any references to the fact that they sometimes stop smoking? I would like to read up on ths a bit more.
This (http://www.amnh.org/nationalcenter/expeditions/blacksmokers/black_smokers.html)is one of the best sites I have found on them.
:D PY :D
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I can't find the link, but I'm fairly certain (read: I am positive) that I read somewhere that they returned to one vent they visited and found the vent dead.
So the question is how did the organisms evolve in such a way that they can survive the unpredictability of the vents?
For that matter how did the organisms spread from vent to vent? Maybe its a similar adaptatin that land animals use to adapt to summer / winter.
Reminds me of Asimov's Nightfall. One of the scientists muses that life cannot devlop in a binary or single star system because it would be dark for part of the day. I think, no matter how extreme the conditions, if we're careful we can evolve organisms that adapt.
We should certainly be careful about hard coding our own prejudices into any simulation. The mroe options the better :D
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For that matter how did the organisms spread from vent to vent? Maybe its a similar adaptatin that land animals use to adapt to summer / winter.
Good question. How did they?
Or more to the point, Did they at all?
If there is one thing that I have studied a lot over the years, it is marine creatures and how to keep them in aquariums. One thing that sticks out beyond all others is that the more these creatures specialize in what they eat and what temperature zones they live in, the less they are able to adapt to even the tiniest change in those conditions.
Try keeping a boxer shrimp (http://scuba.terong.com/underwater-pictures.php?id=135) alive in an aquarium for a while and you will see what I mean. if the water temperature varies by more than 2 or 3 degrees, it wil start to shed legs and stuff. 5 degrees and it's all over. And to think this is one of the easiest shrimps to keep alive.
One possibility is that larval stages might migrate from one smoker to another. Shrimp larva exist in the plankton for weeks or months before they settle down somewhere. Larva are far more able to tolerate environmental changes than adults. Maybe that is how they do it.
One thing I can be almost certain of though is that within hours of a black smoker turning off, every living thing in its vicinity will be totally, completely and irrevocably dead
In short, nobody migrates anywhere. larval forms probably colonize smokers by the purest fluke of just happening to land on one.
Marine creatures in general simply DON'T have the ability to adapt to anything. They have lost this ability through overspecialization.
Check out the Harlequin Shrimp (http://www.dfw.gov.mp/fishpix/harlequin-shrimp.htm) for a real good example of specialization. It eats the tube feet of starfish and has become adapted to living off this alone. You can't keep these things in an aquarium unless you have a ready supply of live starfish. They just can't and won't eat anything else.
:D PY :D
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And what happens to all the SO4? It can't just build up forever.
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ive read about those creatures, if I dont mistagen they can smell a smocker from greate distance. if I remember right its the youngsters who have the ability to go on a journey. if they are lucky they find a smocker to colonize and can live and give birth to other of their species, if they are unlucky they dont find anything.
py are you really gonna program it to be like they are using chemicals like we do up here(plants) and they do down there (smockers)
:D Zelos :D
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I agree with Num 100% , PY has a point but if we finally get the mutation to work efficiently enough we can try what Num is talking about
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if we want evolution and adeption to work the mutation system is the key for succes