Goals

To get a better idea of how Avida works and get inspiration for how a digital evolution system can be visually presented.

Steps

  1. Open Avida-Ed and the Quick Start Manual.

  2. Skim through the manual and find answers to the following:
    • How do you switch between “Population”, “Organism” and “Analysis” view?
    • How do you put an organism into the population?
    • How do you take an organism out of the population and save it?
    • How do you view an organism’s genome?

  3. In Population view, drag the “example” populated dish into the grid and click “Run”.

  4. Once you get some lighter organisms appearing, save one to the freezer.

  5. Switch to Organism view and view your saved organism’s genome, what can it do?

  6. Try restarting with different mutation rates, dish size, population size, and Unlimited vs Limited resources and see what happens!

  7. Reflect on what aspects of this GUI you think are most interesting and you’d like to implement for your projects.

Extra

Try also playing around with the Symbulation GUI. It’s not nearly as advanced, but is something that you could aim for in your project since it’s made with Empirical!