A New Structurally Dissolvable Self-Reproducing Loop Evolving in a Simple Cellular Automata Space

Abstract

We constructed a simple evolutionary system, “evoloop,” on a deterministic nine-state five-neighbor cellular automata (CA) space by improving the structurally dissolvable self-reproducing loop we had previously contrived [14] after Langton's self-reproducing loop [7]. The principal role of this improvement is to enhance the adaptability (a degree of the variety of situations in which structures in the CA space can operate regularly) of the self-reproductive mechanism of loops. The experiment with evoloop met with the intriguing result that, though no mechanism was explicitly provided to promote evolution, the loops varied through direct interaction of their phenotypes, smaller individuals were naturally selected thanks to their quicker self-reproductive ability, and the whole population gradually evolved toward the smallest ones. This result gives a unique example of evolution of self-replicators where genotypical variation is caused by precedent phenotypical variation. Such interrelation of genotype and phenotype would be one of the important factors driving the evolutionary process of primitive life forms that might have actually occurred in ancient times.