Darwinbots Forum
Bots and Simulations => Simulation Emporium => Topic started by: jknilinux on October 14, 2008, 01:18:17 AM
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Hey everyone,
What's the current state of multi-species co-evolution sims? Has anyone had any success? Even better, has anyone had any success with co-evolving zerobots? If you have any co-evosims that work in 2.44, please upload them. Thanks!
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Well there isn't much success on that area.
For zerobots I tend to get a little co-evolution. Some zerobots push veggies towards other zerobots who shoot. With luck both of them then gets some nrg-shots back.
Still a pretty weak combination, after a time the movers extinct becouse they get a barren share of the nrg-shots, and later the shooters die becouse they don't get any veggies directed to them.
So atleast in my situation, not much luck.
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Well there isn't much success on that area.
Well, I know for a fact that Numsgil had a. minimalis and some odd-sounding bot co-evolving, but I don't think that sim was ever uploaded, unfortunately. I was just thinking we should have a place where all the co-evosim uploads are, so we could try them easily, since making your own co-evolving sim is pretty difficult. Anyway, just an idea.
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Something like the new beastery-idea but then for sims you mean.
Have you tried co-evolution in the search option. If there where sims you would find something
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I had a thread called my first evo sim which adresses an umber of qeustions I had, and it has more or less a receipe for making predator - prey coevolution work. good luck
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Hey, ikke!
Passed 10 M cycles (~60.000 generations). No new major changes observed, so I stopped the sim. It's like watching grass grow. No new huntig tactics, no improved eyesight nothing of the sort. Probably more improvements in the existing genes than I identified, but nothing new. Now I now why it 3 billion years befor the cambrian explosion took place, and why so many genes can be traced back to the explosion: truely new genes take a looong time to develop.
I programmed some of the evolved characteristics in the original bots and restarted. One thing I hadn't noticed: the reproductive genes have become less fragile. The original cond statements are barely recognisable after 10 M cycles. The new code is definitely functional. The original code breaks quite often, resulting in an explosion of bots dividing and dividing. In the evolved versions this is gone, mutations don't result in the same breakdown. No idea how. Another point is that not every mutation is an improvement. Somewhere along the line animais stopped rotating when seeing his own species. You can often see pairs of animalis endlessly looking in each others deep blue eyes. Not an optimal hunting strategy, but either coincidence or the development of some other improvement made this strain dominant.
Could you post this 10M sim? Thanks!
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I had a sim co-evolving enitor comesum and algae minimalis. Basically enitor comesum was programmed from the start to eat weaker members of its species, and run from stronger members. The idea being if they start out as cannis they won't devolve and they'll provide selection pressure and population control on themselves. The algae quickly became cancerous, and I used a population limit to keep them in check. The algae formed a kind of bubbly froth where each veggy had at most a few nrg points. I hadn't yet implemented varying bot sizes, so the froth was still vulnerable to shots. They couldn't all be killed because the enitor would chase each other away from the food. It was pretty stable, until the algae learned a new trick: they randomly would accelerate to the right or left. The froth turned into a large field of quickly moving algae. Enitor's guidance system was based on animal minimalis's, so the simple strafing was enough to throw the enitor off, and the enitor population crashed by like 80%. The remaining dozen or so bots couldn't stave off genetic degredation, so I stopped the sim and declared it a mixed victory.
So it was an interesting sim. If I were to do something like that again I'd try to get more computers going so that I had more enitors available in case of a population crash.
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It was pretty stable, until the algae learned a new trick: they randomly would accelerate to the right or left. The froth turned into a large field of quickly moving algae. Enitor's guidance system was based on animal minimalis's, so the simple strafing was enough to throw the enitor off, and the enitor population crashed by like 80%. The remaining dozen or so bots couldn't stave off genetic degredation, so I stopped the sim and declared it a mixed victory.
So it was an interesting sim. If I were to do something like that again I'd try to get more computers going so that I had more enitors available in case of a population crash.
We need some way to prevent algal takeovers.
How about pollination? Whenever a bot bumps into an algae, it copies it's DNA. When it bumps into another algae, that DNA is given to the new algae and it can now reproduce. That way, an algae has to keep the predators alive- it would be disadvantageous for them to evolve "wiggling", etc... In fact, we may see very interesting behaviors evolve if the algae start chasing the bots, so they can reproduce. But it has to be carefull...
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I'm not at home, and my schedule only has me at homefor 12 hours this weekend, so it'll probably be next weekend before I can look if I still have a copy.
As for veggies being cancerous: in the general settings check kilo bodypoint for veggie energy end keep the nrg number low once you have the sim running (low is below 20). This will kill off cancerous veggie strains, because they need size to get food. They reproduce too fast to grow, are too small to sustain their energy needs and die. Check out any of my evo sims, if you want to look at means for population control (veggie energy, energy management, custom simulation cost->dynamic cost are the options to look at)
edit: an early stage of the sim can be found in the thread
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I'm not at home, and my schedule only has me at homefor 12 hours this weekend, so it'll probably be next weekend before I can look if I still have a copy.
As for veggies being cancerous: in the general settings check kilo bodypoint for veggie energy end keep the nrg number low once you have the sim running (low is below 20). This will kill off cancerous veggie strains, because they need size to get food. They reproduce too fast to grow, are too small to sustain their energy needs and die. Check out any of my evo sims, if you want to look at means for population control (veggie energy, energy management, custom simulation cost->dynamic cost are the options to look at)
edit: an early stage of the sim can be found in the thread
Ok, thanks! The reason I wanted to see the 10M sim is because my computer would take forever to do the next few million cycles and get the final behaviors you mentioned before evolution plateaued. The pred/prey cycles still work after all those millenia, right?
Also, Numsgil- Do you have a copy of that sim, before it crashed? We could probably continue it today and prevent the ecocide with tweaked settings.
Anyway, I realize it might be easier to simply change the energy distribution mechanism for the algae. However, if both the predator and the prey need each other, it might be easier to make a stable cycling pattern emerge. Also, it forces sexual reproduction on the algae, and provides many new options for evolution to exploit. Do you think it should be submitted as a suggestion?
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Veggies will probably often be a problem since they recieve so much energy and a small evolutionary step from the alge will require larger steps from the bot for it to survive... if the alge starts sqirming the bots need to track it, which is ofcourse far more complex.
One thing you can do it to set the energy gain for the veggies a lot lower and make it relative to size... this way cancerous squirmy veggies will die out and only slower and larger alge will survive...
Also an extremely high maxcap for veggies will help destroy cancerous veggies as they grow too small and no longer recieve enough energy...
So it's definately possible to set up a sim where veggies are easier to eat, it's just that 40 nrg per cycle no matter what size you are is a lot of energy.
Ofcourse you still have the issue that large veggies may evolve and become agressive, eating any bots that attack them... and if gains are relative to size a fullgrown veggy will still be able to get 32 nrg per cycle even if the gain is only 1 per kiloveggie. But this is a lot less likely to happen though, just throwing 40 nrg per cycle at all veggies with mutations enabled is a recipee for disaster if you're evolving a bot.
But I agree that there's an issue about balancing veggies vs bots, you need to somehow balance the maxpop cap vs the gain in energy, but personaly I can't figure out how low a population would make up for how much energy per cycle...
Maybe veggies should need to use fixpos or something like that in order to gain energy... so moving veggies don't gain anything... or something like that... individual costs for veggies maybe... I dunno...
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Yes I forgot to metion the high max veggie pop. A must have. Cancerous mutations will explode into up to 3000 botlets. If it fizzles due to low size cap they have time to grow, not explode.
As for the veggie vs bot: I don't understand your point. It seems twofold. First you talk about energy gain (total energy?) vs population size. Then you discuss the issue of the hare being outrun by the salade. I agree that is ridiculous, but it is another subject, or am I missing your point?
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Well yes I'm basicaly saying the salad is outrunning the hare
But my point is that veggies hold an advantage in gaining energy but also needs to be more carefull if there's a low veggy cap.
If a veggy is agressive it risks getting killed, but the extra energy gained from killing a bot may not help much in producing offspring since the cap is preventing it.
So this forces veggies to focus on running away most of the time.
So for instance a high veggy cap of 3000 combined with the standard 40 nrg per veggy per cycle would make the veggies a lot stronger than any bots could hope to be. Sure the bot can exceed 3000 in population but that's hardly a great advantage.
Keeping a low energy gain based on size and a more moderate veggy cap will make the veggies far less potent. Ofcourse you can also choose to set the mutations on the veggies lower when you're starting the sim, that might force the veggies to evolve slower. But the problem remains that it takes very litle for the veggies to become to elusive for the bots to follow, so you either need to start out with a strong bot able to handle what is to come or tweek either mutations or nrg gain and veggy cap to balance bots and veggies.
Personaly I think the best long term solution is to balance the energy gain mainly and I would still keep a moderate veggy cap. If the nrg gain is relative to size, the cancerous veggies should die because they don't gain enough energy to grow if they get too small. Also small veggies are a real pain for evo bots.
And you can always regulate the energy gain as you go along, as long as the changes aren't too drastic.
But can't say I know anything for sure, just sugestions, I usualy disable mutations on the alge, the new sim I'm running has mutations on the alge, but it hasn't become a problem yet.
The veggies ahve evolves something that ends up pushing a value into locations 1-15 randomly, so they squirm around, but the bots are still able to feed off them so far. (Also the bots are mutating more frequently than the veggies, and have a higher chance to insert code and lower chance to delete a large chunk, that may be helping them keep up with the alge)
But if the alge get too powerfull I plan on reducing energy gain, before they start to depend on it too much.
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I'm not at home, and my schedule only has me at homefor 12 hours this weekend, so it'll probably be next weekend before I can look if I still have a copy.
As for veggies being cancerous: in the general settings check kilo bodypoint for veggie energy end keep the nrg number low once you have the sim running (low is below 20). This will kill off cancerous veggie strains, because they need size to get food. They reproduce too fast to grow, are too small to sustain their energy needs and die. Check out any of my evo sims, if you want to look at means for population control (veggie energy, energy management, custom simulation cost->dynamic cost are the options to look at)
edit: an early stage of the sim can be found in the thread
I actually implemented the per kilobody feeding method because of that sim. That and the more dynamic bot sizes, since it irked me that the veggies looked like regular bots but didn't have more than half a dozen nrg and maybe 1 body point.
Also, Numsgil- Do you have a copy of that sim, before it crashed? We could probably continue it today and prevent the ecocide with tweaked settings.
Unfortunately, no.
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Well yes I'm basicaly saying the salad is outrunning the hare
But my point is that veggies hold an advantage in gaining energy but also needs to be more carefull if there's a low veggy cap.
If a veggy is agressive it risks getting killed, but the extra energy gained from killing a bot may not help much in producing offspring since the cap is preventing it.
So this forces veggies to focus on running away most of the time.
So for instance a high veggy cap of 3000 combined with the standard 40 nrg per veggy per cycle would make the veggies a lot stronger than any bots could hope to be. Sure the bot can exceed 3000 in population but that's hardly a great advantage.
Keeping a low energy gain based on size and a more moderate veggy cap will make the veggies far less potent. Ofcourse you can also choose to set the mutations on the veggies lower when you're starting the sim, that might force the veggies to evolve slower. But the problem remains that it takes very litle for the veggies to become to elusive for the bots to follow, so you either need to start out with a strong bot able to handle what is to come or tweek either mutations or nrg gain and veggy cap to balance bots and veggies.
Personaly I think the best long term solution is to balance the energy gain mainly and I would still keep a moderate veggy cap. If the nrg gain is relative to size, the cancerous veggies should die because they don't gain enough energy to grow if they get too small. Also small veggies are a real pain for evo bots.
And you can always regulate the energy gain as you go along, as long as the changes aren't too drastic.
But can't say I know anything for sure, just sugestions, I usualy disable mutations on the alge, the new sim I'm running has mutations on the alge, but it hasn't become a problem yet.
The veggies ahve evolves something that ends up pushing a value into locations 1-15 randomly, so they squirm around, but the bots are still able to feed off them so far. (Also the bots are mutating more frequently than the veggies, and have a higher chance to insert code and lower chance to delete a large chunk, that may be helping them keep up with the alge)
But if the alge get too powerfull I plan on reducing energy gain, before they start to depend on it too much.
Ikke, moonfisher-
The problem here is that it's best for the algae to avoid the bots, since bots kill algae. No matter what, even using your modified settings, if they can evolve, they WILL evolve to avoid their predators.
That's why I suggested pollination- if they need each other, then the salad won't want to kill everything. But as long as we have the bots kill algae, and the algae don't need the bots, then it's just an arms race- who will win, the simple bots that get free nrg, or the ones that start out complex but need to eat the simple ones? Of course, in the long run, the simple ones will evolve to kill the complex ones, and all evosims will end with algal takeovers.
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Maybe adding in Day/Night cycles, would help out. If the veggies are abusing the free nrg they get during the day then the night cycle would cause those to die off. Maybe implement the seperate costs for the veggies idea, if their movement costs were high enough they'd be less likely to develop as extreme evasion behaviors.
I wonder why real world veggies don't evade animals more, pretty much everything they do is a passive defense. Anything even close to active motion seems to require pretty extreme circumstances for them.
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Maybe adding in Day/Night cycles, would help out. If the veggies are abusing the free nrg they get during the day then the night cycle would cause those to die off. Maybe implement the seperate costs for the veggies idea, if their movement costs were high enough they'd be less likely to develop as extreme evasion behaviors.
I wonder why real world veggies don't evade animals more, pretty much everything they do is a passive defense. Anything even close to active motion seems to require pretty extreme circumstances for them.
It's too huge of an evolutionary step in the real world to go from a non-moving multicellular organism to a moving one. Animals started out moving, so that's why it was easy for us to evolve limbs, etc... Plants are just stuck where they are because the chances of making an efficient way to move are awful, as opposed to DB, where all you need is one instruction.
Besides, there isn't really a big reason to evolve to move- the worst killers of plants are bugs, which cannot be evaded by moving, as opposed to moose etc.., which never harm too many plants. The only plants that I'm aware of that move are predatory, but their mechanism of movement is horrendously inefficient- they actually move by making their outer cells soak up water to expand. In order to move as fast as a slug, they would waste far more energy than if they just let the moose eat a few leaves and regrow the tissue. On the other hand, if they were poisonous or tasted like crud...
Anyway, this brings up a good point-
movement, etc.. in DB is way too easy. It's so unnatural, and so limiting. We need a much more complex movement system, like maybe a setting where single bots can't move at all- they have to form ties and the ties causing drag against the water makes them move.
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This has already been suggested before and won't be the last time; this really should be top-priority. Possibly adding currents would also make for interesting movement patterns.
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This has already been suggested before and won't be the last time; this really should be top-priority. Possibly adding currents would also make for interesting movement patterns.
I also just realised something- If reproduction was more complex, then we might not have to worry about mutation protection either. In living organisms, reproduction is so complex that if the young has problematic mutations, it'll automatically die because it can't do all the complex processes involved in development. If all a person had to do was say the magic word ".repro" and they'd reproduce, then we'd have tons of mutations and we'd also "evolve" into slugs that can't eat.
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You can turn off the .up, .dn, etc. movement by setting the voluntary movement efficiency in the costs panel to 0. Bots will spend nrg to move, but nothing will happen. Ties, etc. will still cause movement.
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You can turn off the .up, .dn, etc. movement by setting the voluntary movement efficiency in the costs panel to 0. Bots will spend nrg to move, but nothing will happen. Ties, etc. will still cause movement.
OK- there are still two problems, though:
1: Where will I find a bot that only moves with ties?
2: How can I make/evolve a complex organism without cellular movement? There don't happen to be any amoeba-bots out there, right?
However, it does seem like the best temporary solution we have...
By the way, do you remember how you got E. Comesum and A. Minimalis co-evolving? What settings did you use? Did you tweak the DNA?
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I agree that it may be a good idea to have seperate costs for veggies in order to balance the energy spendt with the energy gained.
But it also seems like a good idea to have day and night cycles to keep the veggies from getting too strong.
I don't think veggies will always be shy... if the veggy cap is high then a veggy that kills other veggies could be able to slowly take over the sim and then kill off the bots... ofcourse the first step will always be to run away, but eventualy if there's enough veggies to fight the bots they will become agressive and get rid of their natural predators for good (This could also be something as simple as major shell production when shot at).
But a veggy will not always evolve to outrun the bots, this usualy happens because the bots kill the veggy, but often the veggies can evolve to a point where they escape alive and grow big again, and this is often enough. Ofcourse it would be better to loose nothing at all, but as long as the veggy survives and reproduces as well as the other veggies then natural selection will no longer encourage the alge to be more ellusive unless the bot gets better at eating it...
So with a litle luck and balanced size dependant energy gain and such you can end up with an alge that won't have a reason to evolve unless the bot gets better at chasing it, creating better chances for the bots and veggies to go hand in hand...
Still... in the end it is a messy buisness... there probably should be some sort of disadvantage to the nergy gain, either with seperate costs or a requirement in order to gain energy. For instance not gaining any energy while moving or shooting or creating resources... so a veggy only gains energy while it's doing nothing.
Or maybe having the veggies start out fixed and only gain energy when fixed... although I would imagine it would be hard for veggies to evolve past the first stage, having to unfix to escape predators and then fix again to gain energy...
But if you remove volontary movement it goes for both bots and veggies I think... and in the end the question remains, if it should be hard to move then how did the bots ever evolve movement. I know you can handcraft a bot that moves using ties and it would hold a great advantage over the alge, but in nature noone ever handcrafted the bots, so somehow the evolution of movement must have come at the expense of gaining energy or something like that...
I mean you're just creating a larger gap between bot and veggy, but eventualy with enough time the veggy would still surpass the bot...
I think it would be interesting to have either seperate costs, or some requirements for veggies, either having to be fixed to gain energy or just cutting the nrg gain whenever the veggy does something, forcing it to only do anything when strictly nesesary.
But even then I still suspect it will get ahead at some point since storing a litle bit of shell now and then would be enough to ward off the bots, just to take an example...
But I'm actualy wondering... what's the difference between veggies and bots in nature ? Is there realy a difference or is it just more or less the same thing where the veggies spend all their energy on creating more energy where the bots spend their energy on stealing it from others ?
I know we need to use "magic" when it comes to this sort of thing in DB, but I'm just curious as to how this stuff works IRL.
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1: Where will I find a bot that only moves with ties?
Several of the inchworm type mb's can move without using up, using a combination of fixing/unfixing while lengthening/shortening their tie. May still be able to move using tieang, haven't seen anyone try it since Vermis_P though. Might be interesting to see if the zerobots could come up with something on their own.
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Moonfisher- I absolutely agree- when you run an evosim, whether it takes 1M cycles or 1B cycles, the simpler bots that get free energy WILL evolve to kill whatever it is that keeps killing them, even it it started out as some F1 superbot. I like your ideas, but the only problem is that they discourage interesting behavior. That's why I liked the pollination idea- it encourages interesting behavior, without using too much magic. What do you think about it?
And what do you mean by "What's the difference between veggies and bots in nature?" There's alot of them differences...
Endy- Are there currently any "Amoeba" MBs that move and eat with pseudopodia?
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Inchworm2 (http://www.darwinbots.com/Forum/index.php?showtopic=383) still works somewhat well. I think .tielen may be broken, with the version changes. Could probably improve the MB's using the new eyepos, could scan around the MB and then use setaim to turn.
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I see the point of polination, but it doesn't realy seem natural that single cells would need the other species. And when something comes to polinate you it's also coming to eat you...
In the other scenario it's true that the veggies won't get too advanced since they need to take reglar breaks from doing anything in order to gain energy... but considering that a veggy that always moves will still have no disadvantages conpared to a normal bot then I don't think it's realy being hidered, I'm still concerned the veggy would eventualy take over, it definately needs to be outnumbered by ther bots before it starts to get too clever...
And this is also what I ment with the difference between veggies and bots IRL... as I understand it all life forms evolved from one kind of cell, wich I asume is a veggy... so why do the bots at some point stop gaining energy... why are the carnivorous species not able to gain energy from the sun, what happened to them ?
It just seems like the whole gaining energy deal is something that comes at a great cost, or rather that the behaviors of the bots are preventing them from gaining energy. So what is the difference that defines when you get energy and when you don't when it comes to nature ?
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By the way, do you remember how you got E. Comesum and A. Minimalis co-evolving? What settings did you use? Did you tweak the DNA?
Nothing special. It was E Comesum and Algae Minimalis, without modification. Either F1 costs or I added some extra costs. A little friction (not a lot though), with veggies getting fed 3 or 4 nrg per veggy with a reasonable cap. Fixed bot radii, too. Once the veggies become cancerous, it should be impossible for the bots to kill em all off. Without the veggy repop, the alga in the sim will go through lots of generations very quickly. Something like 10x faster than the bot generations. You'll need a veggy cap to prevent an epic slowdown, of course. E Comesum will keep its population in check pretty well (if there are too many, they'll eat each other), but you'll need at least a 3 or 4 sized field or the population won't be high enough. With speed improvements, I'd go for the max size, actually. The Enitor Comesum are fairly efficient at finding food (they don't sit still like animal minimalis), so you should be able to set up a fairly reasonable evo sim and let it run indefinately. Tweak things as needed, but try to keep the bot population above 100 if you can.
And this is also what I ment with the difference between veggies and bots IRL... as I understand it all life forms evolved from one kind of cell, wich I asume is a veggy... so why do the bots at some point stop gaining energy... why are the carnivorous species not able to gain energy from the sun, what happened to them ?
In RL, I think the limiting factor is roots. If you've ever been buried in sand at the beach you know that only a few inches of soil can be really, really heavy. So a plant can't leave the spot it's in. It could theoretically still have muscles and things for the above ground portion, except that muscles and the like have a constant metabolic cost. Humans burn in excess of 2000 calories a day for only about 100-200 pounds of material. A tree can weigh tons. If it was made out of animal tissue the metabolic costs would be higher than it gets from photosynthesis. So it minimizes metabolic cost by using plant tissue, which is strong and rigid and light to hold the weight without being expensive to maintain.
Microscopic single celled plants actually have a bit of limited mobility. But even on the microscopic level plants try to maximize their surface area for light, which makes them so big that the cost of moving through water (which at that size is more like molasses than water) is prohibitive.
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Last save from my co-evolution
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I see the point of polination, but it doesn't realy seem natural that single cells would need the other species. And when something comes to polinate you it's also coming to eat you...
In the other scenario it's true that the veggies won't get too advanced since they need to take reglar breaks from doing anything in order to gain energy... but considering that a veggy that always moves will still have no disadvantages conpared to a normal bot then I don't think it's realy being hidered, I'm still concerned the veggy would eventualy take over, it definately needs to be outnumbered by ther bots before it starts to get too clever...
And this is also what I ment with the difference between veggies and bots IRL... as I understand it all life forms evolved from one kind of cell, wich I asume is a veggy... so why do the bots at some point stop gaining energy... why are the carnivorous species not able to gain energy from the sun, what happened to them ?
It just seems like the whole gaining energy deal is something that comes at a great cost, or rather that the behaviors of the bots are preventing them from gaining energy. So what is the difference that defines when you get energy and when you don't when it comes to nature ?
Well, it doesn't seem natural that bacteria shoot little bullets at each other either, but we have to live with it... Anyway, so long as it encourages complex behavior, I'm for it, and since we won't be simulating anything as complex as a bee anytime soon, I think we should let them pollinate each other.
And animals don't photosynthesize because they didn't evolve from a veggy, so your assumption is wrong.
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I think it has to do with relying on Mitochondria vs. Chloroplast.
Still weird to think about having a long-term symbiotic relationship with it. Is it part of our species or not? Makes me wonder how a sexrepro'ing bot would do with an asex helper bot, maybe the union is somehow better than either alone.
We do actually use solar nrg to some degree for vitamin E. Pigmentation is probably the only real evolution going on with the movement of people from different areas with differing UV levels.
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Even if we did not evolve from cells having cloroplasts, its not unusual for genes etc to migrate and their are even species that consume alga in order to use the chloroplasts for energy production, the reason this is not common is like in most cases its a cost usefulness problem.
Producing chlorophyll is not without cost also you need magnesium for it , which means you need enough light to make the effort worthwhile.
For one cellular organisms this is simple a comparision of whats more energy efficient to do photosynthesis, using other chemical energy sources or stealing energy.
For multicellular organisms its a question of design, if you are moving you consume more energy than you can produce so you need feeding mechanism with or without photosynthesis, you rely on the surplus if a much larger biomass than you(if the sun intensity would be larger on our planet maybe it would be different) However in order to make photosynthesis profitable for you you need exposed surface that stays in the sun and you need to repair the extra sun damage caused to those surfaces.
In other words you either need bare skin not scales etc or hair like ice bears etc have that channels the light inside the hair and you need to stay most of the time outside in the light.
The fact that ice bears do not do photosysnthesis is probably due to the fact that gene immigration etc is much harder to do for multicellular sexual reproducing organisms.
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I've got co-evolution going on for 2,9M cycles in my current evosim. There's been some discussion on the forum about default rates of mutation being too high for stable evolution, so I've set it to 1/32 of normal rates and tweaked mutation probabilities a bit so that DNA should build up instead of shortening. Despite little mutations and slooow evolution, there's been intersting co-evolution. Veggies have moved constantly, moved away from bots, shot info-shots that interfered with hunting (stored 0 in .dx) and bots have managed to overcome every time. At the moment veggies use shell for defence. As for bots, I've pretty much managed to evolve Animal minimalis to C. Circumgirans again
The sim's got alga minimalis and animal minimalis with body/energy management. Animal minimalis has got 900 some generations and 80 mutations. It's maybe a tad too little, but I want to see how it turns out. Veggie maxpop is at 20000 to allow natural population control, which has worked great. Total population has varied from ~1000 to ~6000. Costs are nearly F1 and veggies get 8 nrg/cycle/kilobodypoint.
The only problem is that the sim is really slow to run, from 0,5 to 3 cycles per sec on my computer and I'm in the army (There's compulsory military service in Finland) at the moment, so I can only run it on weekends. That combined with very slow evolution it gets a bit boring at times. I plan on running the sim as much as I can until my patience runs out. With so small mutation rates devolution shouldn't be a problem so in the long run there should be some nice evolution. I hope.
The sim's attached.
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First of all, endy, there is no "chloroplasts vs. mitochondria." Plants have both.
And what's still weird? Pollination?
Welwordion-
Yes, nothing is without a cost, but movement doesn't magically turn photosynthesis from producing tons of energy to being a drain on resources. In fact, photosynthesis used to be too efficient- the reason plants use a green pigment instead of something that better absorbs yellow light is because the first photosynthesizers did use a different pigment- it was purple, which is great at absorbing yellow light. However, having soo much extra energy apparently made evolution stop working on them- they didn't need to move, they didn't need to evolve period. In the meantime, the green photosynthesizers continued evolving, since they had to to make up for their energy loss, and now all complex plants are green, while the purple bacteria are stuck in hot springs.
And, even though plants have found horribly inefficient forms of movement, that doesn't prevent them from contributing to their survival. If you gave evolution a few billion more years, plants would evolve to run, but it's just a huge evolutionary leap for them now. In fact, by their very nature, they have cell walls, which they'd have to lose first in order to move efficiently, but I don't see why they'd want to lose them in the first place- just one example of why they're stuck in their local minima.
Anyway, I don't see how genes could go from plants to animals... And even if they did, the animals wouldn't get the chloroplasts, since chloroplasts replicate on their own and basically still act like "bacteria" inside the cell, so to get chloroplast DNA you'd have to look at the chloroplast, not the nucleus.
Ikke, Peksa-
Almost forgot to say, Thanks for the sims!
I'm working on a sim where bots can only sexrepro and cannot move with conventional forms of movement (.up, .dn, .sx, .dx) and am already seeing amoeboids that move only using ties- they find a plant, grow like crazy until they kill it, then explode into a cloud of "spores", or single-celled bots, that wait until they hit a plant, and the cycle starts over again. Although the amoeboids can move a little on their own, like from one plant to another nearby one, they aren't that good at it yet- they mainly move using spores. Once I see where this goes, I'll look at yours. Thanks again!
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Yes, nothing is without a cost, but movement doesn't magically turn photosynthesis from producing tons of energy to being a drain on resources. In fact, photosynthesis used to be too efficient- the reason plants use a green pigment instead of something that better absorbs yellow light is because the first photosynthesizers did use a different pigment- it was purple, which is great at absorbing yellow light. However, having soo much extra energy apparently made evolution stop working on them- they didn't need to move, they didn't need to evolve period. In the meantime, the green photosynthesizers continued evolving, since they had to to make up for their energy loss, and now all complex plants are green, while the purple bacteria are stuck in hot springs.
Most light from the sun is red. So green is the best color to have. Why would you need yellow light for fotosyntesis?
The reason green won, is becouse it is better at absorbing the red light.
If plants really would get more energy if they where purple, they would get purple.
Cyanobacteria do use something more from the light-spectrum, I could be wrong. Do you mean that one.
And, even though plants have found horribly inefficient forms of movement, that doesn't prevent them from contributing to their survival. If you gave evolution a few billion more years, plants would evolve to run, but it's just a huge evolutionary leap for them now. In fact, by their very nature, they have cell walls, which they'd have to lose first in order to move efficiently, but I don't see why they'd want to lose them in the first place- just one example of why they're stuck in their local minima.
Plants don't need to move, that's why they don't move. As long there is light, they do as less as possible in my view. The reason, to reproduce as fast as possible.
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Peter-
What do you mean when you say the sun is red?
Look here:
http://www.livescience.com/environment/070...rple_earth.html (http://www.livescience.com/environment/070410_purple_earth.html)
The guy there presents two hypotheses: Purple bacteria absorbed yellow light the best, but were inefficient. Or, he says purple bacteria absorbed yellow light the best, and were too efficient. I think he never actually checked to see which one is more efficient, retinal or chlorophyll. Either way, purple is better at absorbing yellow light, and might have actually given too much energy to the archaea, causing their downfall. So, photosynthesis can produce tons of energy. So, it would be beneficial for animals to photosynthesize, and for plants to move. However, the evolutionary leap to go from plant to animal is too big. So, plants remain plants, and that's why they don't run amok killing animals in real life. Yet (LOL ).
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As soon as chlorophyll(green) bacteria or bacteria eating bacteria take the advantage there would have been evolutionary pressure on the retinal(purple)
What I read out of the article you linked to is that chlorophyll is either more energy efficient or or the retinal did have more colloteral damage involved in its energy extraction process, nothing of stoping evolution.
Of course in multicellular organism gene migration etc is far more difficult those things rather work in single cellular organims and as we can see not all single cell organsims use photosynthesis, cause not everywhere is light to be of worth for that, but multicellular organsims can either make use of plant chlorphyll or becone symbiotic with bacteria able to do photosysnthesis
and like I said the fact that we have not more species doing it is a sign its inefficient without the cost of some design alterations.
Also do not forget that only outer, surface cells are limited to do photosynthesis which reduces the energy gain per organsim quite a lot. Also do not underestimate how much energy moving consumes.
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I haven't look far into it. So maybe that retinal does absorb light better. I haven't checked it, it could be. After all no plant is black, so they're losing light all the time. Yellow light is a kinda small part of the spectrum, so I doubt sincerely if that is where they win it, if I look at the graph of the link it look like it is green light where they win.
Still that name retinal, it sounds familiair.
Ah, found it. It is a form of vitamin A. Who said we can't compete with plants, huh. We're already having the 'plant-beating' (retinal) ourself.
Anyway, it isn't the most formed type of vitamin A, that is the alcohol retinol. But it is there and crucial.
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Keep in mind that red light is low energy. Blue and violet light is high energy. For photosynthesis to work, it involves a metal atom and the photoelectric effect, so it needs very specific wavelengths of light. Also, there are two different pigments involved in photosynthesis, and they absorb slightly different colors. The net effect is that plants absorb red light and blue light, but ignore the middle energy green light in the middle of the spectrum.
Check out this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chlorophyll_ab_spectra.png).
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Yes, correct numsgil.
I was just pointing out that any plant hasn't got 100% effienciency. Primary becouse it isn't black it doesn't absorb everything meaning any plant is wastefull.
Also there seems to be 5 different types, explained in the wiki-site you linked to. The other three are only used in one-cell organisms.
I've got to say this retinal and the chloroplasts fitt each other. If this site is correct why aren't there any retinal-plants. They seem to live from the green light, what the normal plants don't absorb.
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Also, this is ignoring oddities, such as red-leaved plants which, presumably, only use high-energy spectra for photosynthesis.
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Also, this is ignoring oddities, such as red-leaved plants which, presumably, only use high-energy spectra for photosynthesis.
As far I know, that is just something strange that doesn't get them any energie. Some extra pigment that made it look red, but further completely useless.
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Actually I think it's a lack of pigment. Without chlorophyl leaves look red.
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Meaning red light is not absorbed...
Leaves without any form of chlorophyll whatsoever actually look white, which is how variegated leaves form. There are plants with purely red leaves, so what you're saying is that they can't produce sugars in significant quantities.
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If leaves drop from the trees many leaves become red, this is becouse chlorophyl dies and the red stays left. I think there are plenty leaves that have some red pigment, but normally not shown. And so I think red leaves just have more of that red pigment. Possible a little less chlorophyl but I doubt that would be much.
We're getting more and more biological here aren't we.
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I'm afraid so