An Artificial Ecosystem: Emergent Dynamics and Lifelike Properties

Abstract

We discuss modeling and analysis of an artificial ecosystem. The ecosystem consists of basic elements, scents, plants, and animals. There are two species of animals: worms and beetles. As beetles absorb energy from worms, which absorb energy from blades of grass, which absorb energy from water, there is a food chain connecting animals to basic elements. The novelty of our approach lies in the modeling technique: we model the entire ecosystem using a single particle system. Consequently, the physical interaction dynamics not only shows emergent dynamics, but also some interesting lifelike properties. As the main contribution, we formalize the particle system and use it to model and analyze the ecosystem. We consider here several scenarios with nontrivial interaction dynamics.