Understanding the dynamics of biodiversity has
become an important line of research in theoretical ecology and,
in particular, conservation biology. However, studying the evolution
of ecological communities under traditional modeling approaches
based on differential calculus requires speciesʼ characteristics to be
predefined, which limits the generality of the results. An alternative
but less standardized methodology relies on intensive computer
simulation of evolving communities made of simple, explicitly
described individuals. We study here the formation, evolution, and
diversity dynamics of a community of virtual plants with a novel
individual-centered model involving three different scales: the
genetic, the developmental, and the physiological scales. It constitutes
an original attempt at combining development, evolution, and
population dynamics (based on multi-agent interactions) into one
comprehensive, yet simple model. In this world, we observe that our
simulated plants evolve increasingly elaborate canopies, which are
capable of intercepting ever greater amounts of light. Generated
morphologies vary from the simplest one-branch structure of
promoter plants to a complex arborization of several hundred
thousand branches in highly evolved variants. On the population
scale, the heterogeneous spatial structuration of the plant community
at each generation depends solely on the evolution of its component
plants. Using this virtual data, the morphologies and the dynamics
of diversity production were analyzed by various statistical methods,
based on genotypic and phenotypic distance metrics. The results
demonstrate that diversity can spontaneously emerge in a community
of mutually interacting individuals under the influence of specific
environmental conditions.
Buscar en Dimension