Evolution of two symbol signals by simulated organisms

This research used synthetic ethology to investigate the evolution of simulated organisms that communicated information about their environment. Synthetic ethology involves creating a complete environment and simulated organisms which evolve in that environment. Since these simulated organisms exist as data structures in a computer program, their evolution can be studied more closely than the evolution of organisms in the natural world. The main goal of this study was to demonstrate the evolution of simulated organisms that used signals consisting of two symbols to communicate.

After creating a new environment for the simulated organisms, several factors affecting the evolution, such as population size and the learning rule used by each simorg, were investigated. It was concluded that the simulated organisms did successfully evolve the use of two symbol signals to denote situations within their environment.