Basic simulation of natural selection : A study of the evolution of artificial life in varied environments

Abstract: In this project one way of simulating natural selection and its most basic principles was examined. In order to show how simple and effective evolutionary systems really can be, a number of simulated lifeforms struggled for survival and evolved over generations. With this project we wanted both to showcase simple evolutionary principles for educational purposes and to highlight the potential of self improving al- gorithms. This has been done by posing two questions. Can this type of simple simulation suffice to produce stable popu- lation and gene pools, given time? And if so, can it evolve to different stable solutions given different problems, in this case environments, to tackle? The test setup was very simple; a set of simulated organisms were placed in different environ- ments, with the ability to produce offspring with random mutations. The results of the simulation show that the pop- ulation stabilizes in both numbers and gene configurations over time. It also shows that different environmental con- ditions lead to different gene configurations. From this we can conclude that a basic test environment such as the one described in this project can be used for producing both dif- ferent and stable species that are far better suited to survive than early generations.