Figures
Digital organisms evolving in a virtual Petri dish.
A growing population of digital organisms, started from one individual, colonizes an initially empty space (black). As it does so, the population evolves by random mutation and selection, based on each organism's resulting phenotype. Every colored square represents one digital organism, with different colors reflecting different fitness levels. The speed, control, and ease of data collection in the Avida digital evolution platform permits experiments that would be difficult or even impossible with natural organisms, such as the present study (Clune et al., doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000187) on the evolution of mutation rates.
Image Credit: Kaben Nanlohy, Michigan State University
Citation: (2008) PLoS Computational Biology Issue Image | Vol. 4(9) September 2008. PLoS Comput Biol 4(9): ev04.i09. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pcbi.v04.i09
Published: September 26, 2008
Copyright: © 2008 Clune et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
A growing population of digital organisms, started from one individual, colonizes an initially empty space (black). As it does so, the population evolves by random mutation and selection, based on each organism's resulting phenotype. Every colored square represents one digital organism, with different colors reflecting different fitness levels. The speed, control, and ease of data collection in the Avida digital evolution platform permits experiments that would be difficult or even impossible with natural organisms, such as the present study (Clune et al., doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000187) on the evolution of mutation rates.
Image Credit: Kaben Nanlohy, Michigan State University